’Fro Paris to Inglond’? The danse macabre in text and image in late-medieval England

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‘Fro Paris to Inglond’? The danse macabre in text and image in late-medieval England

PROEFSCHRIFT

ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof.mr.dr. P.F. van der Heijden, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op donderdag 25 juni 2009 klokke 11.15 uur

door

Sophia Oosterwijk geboren te Gouda in 1959

Promotiecommissie

Promotores:

Prof.dr. R.H. Bremmer Prof.dr. R.K. Todd

Referent:

Prof.dr. P.M. King, University of Bristol

Overige leden: Prof.dr. R.L. Falkenburg Prof.dr. W. van Anrooij Prof.dr. A.A. MacDonald, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

WOORD VOORAF Een sprong van het jonge kind naar de dood in de middeleeuwse cultuur lijkt nu misschien erg groot, maar in de middeleeuwen lagen geboorte en dood vaak dicht bij elkaar. Mijn interesse voor de dodendans kwam voort uit eerder onderzoek naar het jonge kind in de middeleeuwse cultuur, waarbij kindersterfte een steeds terugkerend thema bleek. Hieruit ontstond het idee om de uit deze nieuwe interesse voortvloeiende artikelen te bundelen als aanzet voor een Leids proefschrift. Zoals veel van mijn eerdere werk toont ook dit proefschrift een bredere aanpak dan “alleen maar” literair onderzoek. Ik vond het een uitdaging om me na zoveel jaren meer op de kunst gerichte studie weer te wenden tot de Engelse literatuur. Bij het bestuderen van de middeleeuwse dodendans is de combinatie van woord en beeld echter cruciaal, waarnaast ook de historische en Europese contekst van essentieel belang bleek. Het is onvermijdelijk dat een zo brede aanpak kan leiden tot vergissingen en hiaten: hoe meer ik probeer te ontdekken, des te meer word ik mezelf bewust van mijn tekortkomingen. Ik ben dan ook veel dank verschuldigd aan iedereen die me met suggesties en adviezen van althans een aantal fouten heeft weten te weerhouden, en me daarnaast talloze nieuwe inzichten heeft geboden. Vele collega’s worden met name genoemd in voetnoten en dankwoorden in de hierna volgende hoofdstukken, maar Sally Badham en Martine Meuwese verdienen mijn bijzondere dank voor al hun adviezen, informatie, kopieën en morele steun, alsmede Dick Visser voor zijn interesse en betrokkenheid over de jaren. Met vertalingen van de Latijnse teksten hielpen Jim Binns, Reinhard Lamp, Nicholas Rogers en bovenal Jerome Bertram. Ik wil ook Jelle Koopmans bedanken voor zijn inzichten in middeleeuwse Franse teksten en hun historische contekst. De redacties van Comparative Drama, de Journal of the British Archaeological Association, en Word & Image alsmede de uitgever Shaun Tyas ben ik zeer erkentelijk voor toestemming tot het reproduceren van eerder verschenen artikelen als hoofdstukken in dit proefschrift, alsook het De Gijzelaar-Hintzenfonds voor een beurs die me in staat stelde om foto’s te bestellen van enkele van de dodendansmedaillons in MS M.359 in de Morgan Library in New York. Veel dank ben ik ook verschuldigd aan de diverse medewerkers van instellingen en bibliotheken waar ik mijn onderzoek heb verricht; met name de staf en gasten van St. Deiniol’s Library in Hawarden, waar tafelgenoten tijdens een avondmaal als reactie op mijn behoedzame uitleg van mijn onderzoek spontaan uitbarstten in het lied “On Ilkley Moor” (“Worms will eat thee ...”) – wederom een bewijs dat (Britse) humor en de dood hand in hand kunnen gaan. Ook wil ik nog speciaal mijn zus Mary en een aantal andere goede vriend(inn)en en collega’s met name bedanken voor al hun steun, adviezen, positieve kritiek, hulp en vertrouwen: Conny Bailey, Cecil Clough, Cliff Davidson, Robert Didier, Miriam Gill, Christa Grössinger, Ilona Hans-Collas, Hartmut Freytag, Netteke Hillen, Didier Jugan, Peter Kerssemakers, Fred Kloppenborg, Stefanie Knöll, Julian Luxford, Mireille Madou en Margaret Scott. Daarnaast ben ik de leden van de Church Monuments Society en de Franse en Duitse dodendansverenigingen zeer dankbaar voor hun bijdragen aan en reacties op mijn voordrachten en artikelen in de afgelopen jaren. Het is jammer dat mijn vader deze promotie niet meer heeft mogen meemaken, maar ik ben dankbaar dat mijn moeder heeft leren begrijpen wat onderzoek voor mij betekent. Ik draag daarom dit proefschrift op aan mijn ouders.

Van de acht hoofdstukken in dit proefschrift zijn er zes eerder verschenen als artikel: • hoofdstuk 1 in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 157 (2004), blz. 61-90. • hoofdstuk 4 in Comparative Drama, 36 (2002-03), blz. 249-87. • hoofdstuk 5 in Word & Image, 22:2 (2006), blz. 146-64. • hoofdstuk 6 in P. Horden (red.), Freedom of Movement in the Middle Ages (2003 Harlaxton Symposium Proceedings), Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 15 (Donington, 2007), blz. 37-56. • hoofdstuk 7 in Church Monuments, 20 (2005), blz. 40-80, 133-40. • hoofdstuk 8 in Church Monuments, 23 (2008), blz. 62-87, 166-68. Daarnaast is een deel van de bevindingen in hoofdstuk 2 gepubliceerd als “Of Dead Kings, Dukes and Constables: The Historical Context of the Danse Macabre in Late Medieval Paris”, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 161 (2008), blz. 131-62.

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CONTENTS / INHOUD WOORD VOORAF

3

INTRODUCTION

7

CHAPTER 1:* Of corpses, constables and kings: the danse macabre in late-medieval and renaissance culture • • • •

CHAPTER 2:

‘Depicte ones on a walle’: The danse macabre in Paris • • • • • •

CHAPTER 3:

The emergence of the danse macabre The spread of the danse macabre Status and gender Conclusion

The historical and political context The danse macabre mural: location, painting and poem The Spanish dança de la muerte and the Latin-German Totentanz The dissemination of the danse macabre in manuscripts and print History or convention: a new interpretation of the danse macabre Conclusion

27 27 33 43 47

57 57 59 65 67 72 85

‘Owte of the frensshe’: John Lydgate and the Dance of Death

99

• The poet John Lydgate and his visit to Paris • Texts and dissemination • Lydgate’s Dance of Death and the ‘Dance’ of Old St Paul’s Cathedral • Prologue and epilogue, author and translator • The characters in Lydgate’s Dance of Death • Conclusion

99 101 106 112 136

CHAPTER 4:* Lessons in ‘hopping’: the Dance of Death and the Chester mystery cycle

137

CHAPTER 5:* ‘Muoz ich tanzen und kan nit gân?’ Death and the infant in the medieval danse macabre

177

• • • • • •

The medieval danse macabre Infantia and the Ages of Man The infant in the danse macabre The infant in the German Totentanz tradition The Infantia Christi Cruel Death or gentle Death?

CHAPTER 6:* Money, morality, mortality: the migration of the danse macabre from murals to misericords

177 178 182 184 187 191

197

CHAPTER 7:* Food for worms – food for thought: the appearance and interpretation of the ‘verminous’ cadaver in Britain and Europe • • • • • • • •

Terminology and emergence of the cadaver effigy Interpretation and context of the cadaver effigy The depiction of bodily corruption Verminous imagery and its contexts The verminous cadaver effigy in England The verminous cadaver effigy in Europe Original appearance and colour Conclusion

CHAPTER 8:* ‘For no man mai fro dethes stroke fle’: Death and danse macabre iconography in memorial art • Introduction • Examples of danse macabre influence on Continental monuments • Danse macabre influences on English monuments • Variations and later examples • Conclusion

223

224 228 232 235 238 245 251 254

273 273 275 279 286 293

CONCLUSION

303

APPENDICES

309

BIBLIOGRAPHY

331

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

351

SAMENVATTING

363

CURRICULUM VITAE

369

* Previously published: see ‘Woord vooraf’.

INTRODUCTION This thesis is a collection of eight essays, six of which have previously been published.1 Together they constitute a wide-ranging investigation into the arrival, development and importance of the danse macabre, or Dance of Death, in latemedieval English literature, drama and art. The danse appears to have been introduced from the Continent into England in or shortly after 1426 by the poet John Lydgate (c.1371-1449). He translated the poem that was incorporated in a new mural scheme on the walls of one of the charnel houses in the cemetery of Les Saints Innocents in Paris, and his poem in turn became part of a painted Dance of Death scheme in Pardon Churchyard at Old St Paul’s, London. The theme soon spread across the country and into Scotland, where it can be found in the carved vault ribs of Rosslyn Chapel (see chapter 1) and in the work of the later ‘Chaucerian’ court poet William Dunbar (1465?-1530?) whose elegiac Lament for the Makaris contains the memorable refrain ‘Timor mortis conturbat me’ (fear of death disturbs my mind) from the Office of the Dead (see chapter 7).2 Yet in essence the danse is a combination of text and image, demonstrating how all ranks of medieval society are summoned to their deaths either by Death personified or by representatives of the dead. 1. (Left) ‘Imago mortis’, woodcut from the Liber Chronicarum or Nuremberg Chronicle published by Anton Koberger in 1493.

2. (Right) The apothecary flanked by two dead dancers, danse macabre medallion accompanying the Office of the Dead in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430-35 (New York, Morgan Library, MS M.359, fol. 142r).

As the danse did not originate in England, it is necessary to consider the theme in its wider European context. An image that is frequently used as an illustration of a medieval danse macabre is the ‘Imago mortis’ woodcut by Michael Wolgemut and his workshop in the 1493 Liber Chronicarum, better known as the Schedelsche Weltchronik or Nuremberg Chronicle (Fig. 1).3 This picture of dancing skeletons with musical accompaniment from a dead flautist might seem the perfect illustration of a theme that is often associated with the Black Death, even though when this epidemic first hit Europe in 1347 there was already a long tradition of death-inspired literature and imagery (see also chapter 7).4 In fact, the woodcut does not illustrate a true danse macabre as there is no encounter with the living, nor is it an illustration of the

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Introduction

Resurrection, as is sometimes claimed.5 Instead, Wolgemut probably intended this woodcut to represent a more generic image of death as one of the Four Last Things, for it was placed towards the end of the Seventh Age, just before a full-page miniature of the Last Judgement.6 This woodcut and the way it is so often misinterpreted as a danse macabre illustration thus raise a number of important points: the question whether the theme is about Death or the dead; the role of music in the danse; and finally the present lack of understanding of what was once a well-known theme in medieval culture. The last point begs the question: was the danse really such a familiar theme in Britain if it is so little known or understood nowadays? The idea of who summons the living in the danse macabre was interpreted differently almost from the start. Lydgate opted for ‘Death’, as indicated by the title of his composition. However, the French poem used in the scheme at Les Innocents appears to have had le mort (the dead man) rather than la mort (death) as the protagonist. This raises an interesting point about the origins of the danse (see also chapter 2), as well as about the nature of any performances based on it. Admittedly, le is a feminine article in some French dialects of the period, so that le mort may still refer to Death. The text still has le mort in Guy Marchant’s printed Danse Macabre edition of 1485, which was based on the mural, and la morte (the dead woman) in his 1486 Danse Macabre des Femmes, although various manuscript copies of both poems substitute la mort throughout.7 Despite what the term seems to imply, the German Totentanz also has der Tod (Death) yet the bishop in the Latin text complains about being constrained by ‘distorti’ (Appendix 6).8 Yet whereas it makes good sense to juxtapose the living with Death in a dialogue poem, in murals that present an alternating chain of dancers the interaction must be between the living and the dead in order to make visual sense. Any danse performance would thus require either separate exchanges between Death and each living individual, or multiple dead characters to engage the living in a joint dance, yet perhaps with Death as overall director (Fig. 1).9 The idea of a confrontation with the dead, rather than with Death, is illustrated by isolated scenes of a living character being flanked by two morts. Examples occur in the marginal decorations of a Parisian books of hours illuminated not long after the creation of the mural at Les Saints Innocents (Fig. 2), but also in the much later woodcut series by Hans Holbein the Younger published in 1536. This type of encounter also brings to mind the earlier tale of the Three Living and the Three Dead, which first emerged in French poetry in the mid to late thirteenth century and which is often cited as a possible precursor of the danse macabre (see chapter 1). Here, too, the dead are counterparts of the living but they merely engage in a dialogue, issuing warnings about the inevitability of death and the vanity of earthly pleasures. The Three Dead do not summon the living to join them; their ominous appearance instead brings a reprieve that is not offered to the living in the danse. While Lydgate’s interpretation of le mort as Death personified shows how the danse lent itself to adaptation by authors and artists, his poem also fits into a native literary tradition on the theme of death. Some authors found their inspiration in what happens to the body after death, such as the anonymous author of the fragmentary poem known as The Grave in the twelfth-century manuscript Bodley 343 (Oxford, Bodleian Library) with its graphic warning that ‘wurmes þe to deleð’.10 Another explicit example is A Disputacion betwyx þe Body and Wormes, an illustrated copy of which survives in the so-called Carthusian Miscellany manuscript of c.1435-40 (see chapter 7, col.pl. 4).11 Others instead chose to focus on the process of dying, such as Thomas Hoccleve (c.1370-1440) in his poem Learn to Die, which contains the dying

Introduction

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man’s telling line ‘Let me be your ensaumple and your mirour’.12 It is interesting that Hoccleve’s hypothetical dying man, conjured up by Wisdom for the benefit of her disciple, is described as ‘Thymage of deeth’ (l. 337), rather like a cadaver effigy addressing the living from a tomb monument (see chapter 7). These contemptus mundi texts were meant to show that there are different lessons to be learnt from each part of the process (from dying to burial and putrefaction), from the dead, and from Death itself. The summons in the danse macabre was thus supposed to come from either Death itself or from the dead, depending on the interpretation favoured. The living characters in the medieval danse are predominently male, hierarchically presented in an alternating sequence of clerical and lay characters, and their dead opponents likewise appear to be male, insofar as decaying corpses still show signs of gender; rarely do we find the dead displaying female characteristics, and then only in late depictions such as Holbein’s woodcuts (see chapter 1, figs 11-12).13 Yet was Death itself perceived as male or female in medieval culture? Hoccleve appears to have veered towards the latter view in his poem Learn to Die where the dying man explains: Deeth fauorable is to no maner wight; To all hir self shee delith equally; Shee dredith hem nat þat been of greet might, Ne of the olde and yonge hath no mercy; The ryche & poore folk eek certainly She sesith shee sparith right noon estaat; Al þat lyf berith with hir chek is maat. (ll. 155-61)

This view also matches the gender of Death in the alliterative debate poem Death and Liffe, which may originally date from the fourteenth century. It presents the opponent of ‘Dame Liffe’ as a horrifying female, ‘long & leane, & lodlye to see’; ‘Shee was naked as my nayle, [the navele] aboue; / & below she was lapped about in linenn breeches’.14 A well-known example in medieval Italian art is the long-haired female death demon wielding a scythe as she flies over a heap of corpses towards a group of blissfully unaware noblemen and -women who are enjoying themselves in courtly pursuits; this scene forms the right half of the fourteenth-century fresco presenting on the left the story of the Three Living and Three Dead in the Campo Santo in Pisa, nowadays attributed to the painter Buonamico (Buffalmacco).15 Traditionally the ‘Grim Reaper’ is presented as male, however, and this is what the servant boy towards the start of Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale understands Death to be. The medieval danse macabre was thus a predominantly male-oriented affair with living and dead male protagonists. The absence or presence of female characters in the danse varies between regional traditions, with a handful of women appearing in the German Totentanz but none in the Spanish Dança General de la Muerte (see chapter 2 and Appendices); until the composition of the Danse Macabre des Femmes, the inclusion of a single female figure in the fresco at La Chaise-Dieu was rather an exception in France. Although the acteur (author) in the prologue to the French poem warns his readers that death ‘A homme et femme est naturelle’, the sequence of characters that follows consists solely of men. Yet Lydgate chose to introduce a few female characters, which is another deviation from his French model (see chapter 3). The focus on male representatives is, of course, the norm in medieval culture: women are similarly absent in depictions of the Ages of Man. The Three Living are

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Introduction

also traditionally presented as male nobles. An exception is a miniature of Mary of Burgundy on horseback with two male companions who are being pursued by three corpse figures armed with darts. This scene occurs in the Flemish Hours of Joanna of Castile (London, British Library, MS Add. 35313, fol. 158v), but it was probably based on an earlier miniature in the Hours of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, ms. 78 B 12, fol. 220v, Fig. 3).16 The original must have been painted after Mary’s early death in 1482, caused by a fall from her horse during a hunt. This unusual inclusion of a real-life figure is important in view of the new interpretation of some of the characters in the Paris Danse Macabre mural that are discussed in chapter 2: contrary to common belief, the living in the danse are not always anonymous stereotypes, as is demonstrated by Lydgate’s introduction of the named character ‘Maister Jon Rikelle some tyme tregetowre / Of nobille harry kynge of Ingelonde / And of Fraunce the myghti Conquerowre’ (E:513-15).17 3. (Left) Mary of Burgundy as one of the Three Living being attacked by the Three Dead, miniature in the Book of Hours of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian, late fifteenth century (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, ms. 78 B 12, fol. 220v).

4. (Below) Four dead musicians, additional woodcut introduced by Guy Marchant in his 1486 Danse Macabre edition.

Another regional difference is the element of music, which would seem to be implied by the term danse macabre. Music and capering cadavers indeed proliferate in the German Totentanz, but not in the French or English traditions where the dead are instead armed with burial-related attributes such as coffins, spades and pick-axes. Marchant’s woodcut of the four dead musicians, which was added as an introduction to his 1486 Danse Macabre edition (Fig. 4), is very much the exception, although their choice of instruments is curious: a bagpipe and a combination of pipe and tabor, but also the more elevated harp and portable organ. There is a strong suggestion in danse macabre texts that the music is of a ‘lowly’ type, as the bagpipe also indicates (see chapter 1, fig. 13).18 This would explain the complaint by Lydgate’s king about this ‘daunce [...] of fotynge so sauage’ (E-114), although in the French mural the same phrase may have held a very different meaning for contemporaries (see chapter 2). Despite the absence of musical instruments in Marchant’s other woodcuts, music is hinted at throughout the text whenever le mort invites his victim to the dance. Music was regarded in very different ways in medieval culture: although there was

Introduction

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believed to be music in heaven played by angels, the church tended to decry music and dancing as sinful.19 This attitude is evident in the well-known story recounted in the Nuremberg Chronicle (and earlier in Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne of 1303) about the dancers of Kölbigk in the diocese of Magdeburg, who had the audacity of singing and dancing in the local churchyard on Christmas Eve.20 The local priest prayed that they remain dancing for twelve months, after which period all twenty-eight dancers died. If worldly music was considered sinful, hellish music was far worse. According to theological tradition, as discussed by Kathi Meyer-Baer, ‘In hell itself there is no music [...]. In hell there is only noise’.21 Devils may be observed in medieval (and later in Protestant) art playing often ‘lowly’ instruments such as bagpipes either as a means towards temptation or – most notably in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch – as part of eternal torment in hell.22 Interesting in this context are the words of the preacher to the reader in the prologue of the Latin-German Totentanz, ‘Fistula tartarea vos iungit in una chorea’ and ‘Mit seiner hellischen pfeifen schreien / Bringt er euch all an einen reien’, referring purportedly to Death playing a hellish flute but at the same time implying that death will mean hell for many sinful mortals. The reference to Death’s ‘fistula tartarea’ is reminiscent of the legendary Pied Piper who first led the rats, and then the children of Hamelin to their doom.23 Yet in principle the dead figures in the danse macabre are merely messengers of death; they are not supposed to judge their victims or deliver them to hell, unlike the devils with whom they yet share similarities. In some medieval Massacre plays (see chapter 4) Herod is carried off not by Death but by devils, who were traditionally depicted as black – the archetypal colour of evil. When Hoccleve’s hypothetical dying man in the poem Learn to Die exclaims in his death agony that ‘The blake-faced ethiopiens / me enuyrone’ (ll. 673-74), he refers to the devils waiting to seize his soul, as his subsequent lines make clear. Devils are described in similar terms in another of Mannyng’s exempla where a sick boy cries to his over-indulgent father: ‘blake men, blake, / Are aboutë me to take; / Me, wyþ hem, wyl þey lede, / Y ne shal skapë for no nede’.24 In contrast, when the child in the Latin-German Totentanz cries to his mother that ‘me vir trahit ater’ or ‘ein swarzer man ziuht mich dahin’ (see chapter 5), he is referring to Death whose colour is probably that of the putrefying corpse (see chapter 7). Some woodcuts in printed Kalendrier des Bergers and Danse Macabre editions even depict Death as a Moorish figure blowing a trumpet – a curious example of cross-fertilisation of both colour and musical imagery.25 Of course, the trumpet is also reminiscent of the Last Judgement where angels blow trumpets to raise the dead. If music was meant to be an essential aspect of the danse, does this tell us anything about the origins of the theme? There is an intriguing allusion in the Middle English morality play The Castle of Perseverance where two lines describe how Mankind ‘wende that he schulde a levyd ay, / Tyl Deth trypte hym on hys daunce’.26 If the date of c.1400-25 that has been assigned to the play is correct, this reference to Death dancing would predate both Lydgate’s poem and the mural at Les Innocents. Some apparent references to the danse in French sources similarly predate the mural in Paris.27 Yet the poem that was used in the Parisian scheme is in any case unlikely to have been a danse macabre prototype. As explained in chapter 1, the earliest known occurrence of the term is the enigmatic verse ‘Je fis de Macabré la dance [...]’ in Jehan Le Fèvre’s poem Respit de la Mort of 1376.28 Although no danse macabre texts survive for nearly half a century until the creation of the mural in Paris between

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August 1424 and Lent 1425 (see chapter 2), it must be remembered that many medieval texts have been lost. Le Fèvre may have been referring to some now unknown form of ‘macabre’ performance that he expected his readers to be familiar with, but he could equally have alluded to a no longer extant poem that he himself wrote. The brief mention by Abbé Miette (an antiquarian conducting research in Normandy before the French Revolution) of a lost record in the Caudebec church archive that supposedly described a danse macabre performance in the church in 1393 is unfortunately too vague to be accepted as firm evidence (see also chapter 8).29 Even so, there are likely to have been earlier dramatic enactments on the theme of Death. Suggestive is the description in the fourteenth-century Scottichronicon of a dance performed at the wedding of Alexander III of Scotland and Yolande de Dreux at Jedburgh in October 1285 (see chapter 1), but this account by John of Fordun (d. c.1384) may have been retrospectively coloured by the king’s death soon after the wedding, or even by a later vogue for such death-inspired pageants. Nonetheless, the idea of a performance underlying the subsequent literary and visual tradition should not be dismissed for lack of firm evidence: dramatic performances are by their very nature transient, and difficult to date when written versions do survive. The extant corpus of medieval drama texts – mostly preserved in late-medieval or early modern manuscript copies – can only represent a small proportion of what was once performed in the course of the Middle Ages and even for a period after the Reformation. The dialogue and musical character of the danse make a development from drama possible but it also would have lent itself well to real-life enactment once the theme had become known through poetry and art.30 The danse could in its turn have influenced other plays. In the morality play Everyman – itself an import from the Continent, just like the danse – the protagonist is left with only Good Deeds to support him at the final reckoning when all his former friends and faculties have failed him.31 The danse likewise reminds the living that they must relinquish beauty, strength, wealth, and all other earthly goods and pleasures.

5. Procession of the damned towards hell, detail of the carved tympanum of the Judgement portal, north-transept, Rheims Cathedral, c.1225-30.

Scholars have long drawn comparisons between medieval art and drama, some of which also apply to the danse macabre. Iconographically interesting is the comparison with the Last Judgement in church art of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Carved

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tympana above the doors of cathedrals such as Autun, Rouen, Rheims (Fig. 5) and Bamberg show rows of souls being escorted to heaven by angels and to hell by devils: reunited with their resurrected bodies, the souls exhibit all the trappings that denote their former status on earth, such as tiaras for popes, crowns for emperors and kings, mitres and tonsures for the clergy, and money-bags for the avaricious.32 Similar depictions may have played a role in the genesis of the danse on the Continent, even if such tympana do not occur much in English medieval church architecture. More relevant in England is the visualisation of the Last Judgement in medieval drama, which may have been influenced by the danse macabre. The Chester Last Judgement play presents two groups of saved and lost souls that include a pope, an emperor, a king, a queen, a merchant and a ‘Justiciarius’; a hierarchical grouping of social types that bears a strong resemblance to what we find in the danse (see chapter 4). Similar groupings of social types are found in another precursor of the danse: the Vado Mori poem, of which a number of different versions survive, the earliest dating to the thirteenth century.33 All of these versions comprise solely male characters who in distich verse monologues lament the fact that they are about to die, each repeating like a refrain the phrase ‘vado mori’. Thus the king sighs, ‘Vado mori: rex sum. Quid honor, quid gloria mundi? / Est via mors hominis regia: vado mori’ (I am going to die: I am the king. What use is honour, what use worldly glory? Death is the royal road of man: I am going to die.).34 The Vado Mori poems share a number of characters with the danse, such as the aforementioned king, the pope, bishop, knight and physician, but the verses for each are rather stereotypical and there is no evidence of a pictorial Vado Mori tradition. Moreover, the Vado Mori poems also comprise figures that are either characterised by their age or by other traits and sins, such as the juvenis, senior, sapiens, stultus, dives, pauper, voluptas and vino repletus. This suggests an influence of other popular medieval themes such as the Ages of Man and the Seven Deadly Sins, which in turn influenced depictions of the danse macabre. 6. (Left) Woodcut illustrating the sin of Pride, from a Netherlandish Ars Moriendi edition of 1465. 7. (Right) The Three Dead pursuing the Three Living (not shown), miniature in a French book of hours, c.1500 (Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS 38, fol. 96r).

Dying in a state of sin was a great fear among medieval people, and the danse macabre presents many characters who are utterly unprepared for death. In the later fifteenth century, printed Ars Moriendi editions with woodcut illustrations (Fig. 6) impressed upon individual readers how they should learn to die a good death. In both

Introduction

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literature, drama and art, death was held up to medieval readers and viewers as a mirror, but with subtle differences. The Three Dead present themselves as a mirror to the Three Living in order to warn them of the ultimate fate that awaits all;35 yet here the dead do not originally threaten the living, allowing them instead time to mend their ways. In the danse the living are granted no such reprieve and their inevitable death becomes a warning to the audience, especially as most of the living are woefully illprepared for death; they tend to look back at their lives with vain regrets, rather than forward at the judgement that awaits them. The Ars Moriendi offers a variation on the danse by showing through different examples how to die well or badly; the devils, angels and saints present at each deathbed serve to remind the dying – and thereby the reader – of the consequences of their choices. The cadaver effigy takes the beholder yet further forward, beyond the moment of death to the stark image of putrefaction. However, its underlying message is that while the body is corruptible the soul is immortal, and at the Last Judgement all souls will be reunited with their resurrected bodies. The dead dancers in the danse macabre are thus in a way still very much of this world where corruption reigns suppreme. 8. (Left) Hieronymus Bosch, Death of a Miser, panel from a dismantled altarpiece, c.1480-90, Washington, National Gallery.

9. (Right) Death of an avaricious king (King Sweyn?), incomplete palimpsest brass of c.1480, found at Frenze, Norfolk.

Inevitably, these different ‘macabre’ traditions came to influence each other. Cross-fertilisation of ideas and imagery meant that certain themes changed in character in the course of the Middle Ages. Whereas the Three Dead in the earlyfourteenth-century miniature in the psalter of Robert de Lisle (see chapter 1, fig. 2) merely engage the Three Living in a polite if grim conversation, their successors in depictions of the theme in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries aggressively

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pursue the fleeing figures of the Three Living, armed with a spear, a coffin and a spade (Fig. 7). The dart, arrow, javelin or spear becomes an increasingly common attribute of Death; it is held by le mort in several of Marchant’s woodcuts, albeit only as another attribute. Yet it can also be actively used as a weapon to strike down the living, as shown by various sketches in the so-called Carthusian miscellany of c.143540 (see chapter 4, fig. 8). A typical Continental example of this type of deathbed image is the so-called Death of a Miser panel from a dismantled altarpiece by Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) now in the National Gallery, Washington (Fig. 8). Iconographic cross-fertilisation may lead to confusion as it is not just Death who can strike down the living with a spear, dart or javelin. Death’s presence appears to be implied by his spear transfixing a king in a palimpsest brass fragment of c.1480 found at Frenze in Norfolk, which was traditionally believed to represent the death of the avaricious king from the Ars Moriendi (Fig. 9).36 An alternative interpretation of this brass, however, is the story of St Edmund killing King Sweyn in his sleep as a just punishment for his oppression of the people of Bury; a devil hovering above the bed gleefully seizes the king’s soul. With the king’s assailant missing, we can no longer be sure what the complete brass was intended to show: there is the possibility of iconographic influences from both the Ars Moriendi, the death of Herod, and the Dance of Death, the latter being popular themes in this period and in this part of England (see also Figs 10 and 16). Therefore, not all ‘macabre’ art can be traced back to the same source: the Dance of Death, too, is just one of several themes or motifs, but an important one nonetheless.

10. (Above left) Death and the bishop, sole surviving panel of a larger stained-glass danse macabre scheme of c.1500, now situated in a window in the south wall of the nave of St Andrew’s church, Norwich.

11. (Above right) Death rising from a tomb to shoot an arrow at vicar Henry Williams (d. 1500), stained-glass panel in the choir of St Nicholas church, Stanford-on-Avon, Northamptonshire.

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Introduction

Death was thus a major theme in late-medieval art, literature and drama, and there has consequently been a plethora of scholarly texts on death in the Middle Ages (and later periods). In this line of research the French historian Philippe Ariès was once again a prime mover, just as he had earlier been in childhood studies (see chapter 5), although the danse macabre is mentioned only very briefly in his work.37 At least there are plenty of danse macabre and Totentanz aficionados on the Continent nowadays, unlike in Britain where the theme appears to be far less known or recognised and where lip service is paid at best to the danse in studies of medieval death. An example is Colin Platt’s entertaining book King Death, which does make reference to the danse and includes an illustration of the stained-glass panel of Death and the Bishop in St Andrew’s church in Norwich (Fig. 10);38 yet while quoting John Stow’s 1598 edition of the Survey of London on the Dance of Death scheme in Pardon Churchyard, Platt fails to mention Stow’s later account of its destruction in 1549. However, Platt correctly identifies the Norwich panel as the sole survivor of a larger Danse Macabre window since lost, whereas it was not recognised as such by Richard Marks in his book Stained Glass in England during the Middle Ages, despite the fact that the author had earlier devoted an article to a contemporary memorial glass panel of Death shooting an arrow at vicar Henry Williams which had been installed in Stanford-on-Avon church in accordance with Williams’ instructions in his will of 5 April 1500 (see Fig. 11 and chapter 8).39 Likewise, although Nigel Llewellyn devoted a chapter of his book The Art of Death to ‘Dances of Death’, he illustrated the earlier period with only Holbein’s woodcuts published in 1538; apart from citing Sir Thomas More’s mention of the scheme at Old St Paul’s when it was still in existence during the earlier part of the period covered by his study (see below), Llewellyn chose to ignore the theme’s pre-Holbein origins.40 It has surprised continental authors how a theme that attracted the attention of an eighteenth-century English antiquarian – Francis Douce (1757-1834) – long before anyone else in Europe took a serious interest in it, could subsequently have become so little known in his native country.41 The iconographical variations may have blurred the picture that many have of the danse: for example, the stained-glass panel in Norwich contains no allusions to music nor evidence of accompanying verses, and it is now only a single scene that is almost lost high among the nave clerestory windows. It also does not help that the danse emerges rather awkwardly in the first part of the fifteenth century – too early for most early modernists but too late for those medievalists who prefer the High Gothic period – and that there are apparently so few examples left across Britain, of which none are on a par with Holbein’s woodcuts. Douce himself mentioned having in his possession ‘two panes of glass with a portion of a Dance of Death’ that ‘probably belonged to a Macaber Dance in the windows of some church’: one without verses, 81/2 by 7 in., was described as showing Death and the pope, while the other featured three dead figures and the lines ‘ev’ry man to be contented wt his chaunce, / And when it shall please God to folowe my daunce’.42 Sadly, the current whereabouts of both panes are not known and their origins can no longer be ascertained. The greatest losses occurred long before Douce’s time, however, and the importance of the danse macabre in the medieval period is now difficult to judge after the havoc wreaked on church art during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth I and, a century later, under Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan soldiers. These losses greatly affect our understanding of medieval culture to the extent that it is now hard to comprehend that such a seemingly marginal theme as the Dance of Death was

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once quite well known across the country. Probably the most renowned example of the theme in England was the series of paintings in Pardon Churchyard at Old St Paul’s Cathedral, London, which was commissioned by the London Town Clerk John Carpenter (see chapter 3). This scheme incorporated a revised version of Lydgate’s original Dance of Death poem that the author had based on the French verses in the famous Danse Macabre mural in the cemetery of the parish church of Les Saints Innocents after a visit to Paris in or around 1426. The painted scheme in London was evidently intended to emulate the fame of its Parisian counterpart, which had been painted in 1424-25 during the English occupation of the French capital (see chapter 2). From its prestigious location in London’s foremost church the Dance of Death derived the name by which it became popularly known in medieval England: references to the ‘Dance of Paul’s’ can be found as far afield as Long Melford, Bristol and Ludlow (see chapter 1) as well as in at least two extant manuscript copies of Lydgate’s poem. Even so, the wide-spread use of this name does not imply any degree of resemblance with the actual scheme on display at Old St Paul’s. Pardon Churchyard was demolished in 1549 together with its Dance of Death paintings, like so many other such schemes, including the painted and stained cloths of Long Melford and Bristol. One example that still survives, albeit hidden behind oak panelling, is the Dance of Death mural on the north wall of the nave of the Guild Chapel in Stratford-upon-Avon (see chapter 1, fig. 6, and chapter 3, fig. 11). In 156364 the wall-paintings in this chapel were covered with whitewash on the authority of John Shakespeare (the playwright’s father) as Chamberlain of the Corporation of Stratford in obeisance of the Royal Injunctions of 1559, which demanded the removal of all signs of superstition and idolatry from places of worship. It is just possible – but not very likely – that some wall-paintings which were not judged offensive (including the Dance of Death) may have had a temporary reprieve.43 The ‘Daunce of Powles’ at Stratford was still mentioned in 1576 by the London antiquary John Stow (1525-1605) in a note added to his manuscript copy of John Leland’s Itinerary.44

12. (Left) Woodcut illustration at the start of The daunce of Machabree, published by Richard Tottel in 1554 as an appendix to his edition of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes; the pope and the clergy are prominently present.

Even if the Stratford Dance of Death was indeed covered up while William Shakespeare was still a mere infant, he is likely to have heard about it later and to have come across earlier and more recent examples of the theme elsewhere, both in (monumental) art and in print.45 In 1554 – sixteen years after the publication of

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Holbein’s danse macabre woodcuts in Lyons and only five years after the destruction of Pardon Churchyard – Richard Tottel printed Lydgate’s Dance of Death poem with two woodcut illustrations as an appendix to The Fall of Princes (Fig. 12 and chapter 7, fig. 19); this relatively late publication from the reign of Queen Mary may have been partly inspired by antiquarian motives, to preserve the memory of a once popular scheme (see chapter 3).46 In 1569, John Day (1522-84), who was a prominent member of the London Stationers’ Company, included an extensive Dance of Death cycle of sixty-two lay male and female characters with short English monologue verses in the margins of his Christian Prayers and Meditations (Fig. 13; see also chapter 8); the graphic work is good, even if the accompanying verses are rather uninspiring doggerel.47 The satirical adaptation of the danse in the brass commemorating the parkkeeper James Gray (d. 1591) at Hunsdon in Hertfordshire (see Fig. 14 and chapter 8) provides further proof that the theme was far from forgotten, despite the destruction of the medieval ‘Dance of Paul’s’ scheme in London; it is but one of many examples of tomb monuments on which personifications of Death, armed with darts or spears, make their lethal appearance (see chapter 8).48 13. (Left) Death with the infant, detail from the marginal danse macabre cycle which initially appeared in the 1569 edition of John Day’s Christian Prayers and Meditations, here reproduced from his 1578 Booke of Christian Prayers. (See also chapter 5.)

14. (Right) Brass of the park-keeper James Gray (d. 1591) at Hunsdon, Hertfordshire.

Evidence for the impact of the medieval danse macabre can thus still be found in Renaissance art and literature. In his unfinished treatise on the Four Last Things, which probably dates from c.1522, Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) made a tantalising reference to the Dance of Death scheme at Pardon Churchyard. The excerpt is usually quoted only in part yet deserves to be given in full for a better sense of the overall context of More’s meditation on death: But if we not only here this word death, but also let sink into our heartes, the very fantasye and depe imaginacion thereof, we shall parceiue therby, that we wer neuer so gretly moued by the beholding of the daunce of death pictured in Poules, as we shal fele our self stered and altered, by the feling of that imaginacion in our hertes. And no maruell. For those pictures expresse only, ye lothely figure of our dead bony bodies biten away ye flesh. Which though it be ougly to behold, yet neither the sight thereof, nor the sight of all ye dead heades in ye charnel house, nor the apparicion of a very ghost, is halfe so grisely as the depe conceiued fantasy of deathe in his

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nature, by the liuely imaginacyon grauen in thyne owne heart. For there seest thou, not one plain grieuous sight of the bare bones hanging by the sinewes, but thou seest (yf thou fantasye thyne own death, for so art thou by this counsell aduised) thou seest I saye thy selfe yf thou dye no worse death, yet at the leastwise lying in thy bedde, thy hed shooting, thy backe aking, thy vaynes beating, thine heart panting, thy throte ratelyng, thy fleshe trembling, thy mouth gaping, thy nose sharping, thy legges coling, thy fingers fimbling, thy breath shorting, all thy strength fainting, thy lyfe vanishing, and thy death drawyng on.49

It is unfortunate that More does not actually describe the paintings. Instead, he dismisses these ‘lothely’ images of dead figures – combined with the very real skulls piled high in the nearby charnel houses – as less effective than meditations on one’s own death with all its attendant symptoms. His words convey the impact that the scheme must have had on visitors to the churchyard from the moment when the paintings were first revealed, probably in the early 1430s, but no detailed description survives to tell us what they looked like. More’s words are further proof that a preoccupation with mortality was not a purely medieval phenomenon, but that death continued to be a source of inspiration, fascination and meditation, albeit in different ways. The danse macabre did not just paint a picture of various social stereotypes meeting Death; it was intended to serve viewers and readers as a mirror to remind them of their own inevitable end and to prepare them for the hereafter. More’s text expounds how beholders should take the images at St Paul’s one step further by relating them to the agonies of death that they themselves must expect to endure ‘at the leastwise’(!); a horrifying deathbed image conjured up by many authors and artists before More, as the examples of Hoccleve and the Ars Moriendi show. Many cadaver effigies also still seem to betray the final death throes and as such are very different from the cavorting corpses in the danse who almost appear to enjoy their condition. It is understandable, therefore, why Lydgate and others chose to interpret the figures of le mort as Death personified, for the dead dancers are much more like opponents of the living than a premonition of what each of us will become in the words of the Three Dead, ‘Sum quod eris; fuerisque quod es’. The requirement to apply the message of the danse to oneself may also explain why the visualisation of the theme changed from a chain of dancers in a neutral setting, with the living characterised by their dress or a token attribute, to a set of separate scenes in which each victim of Death is placed in his own personal environment. This individualisation is what characterises Holbein’s woodcuts, but similar settings can be observed much earlier in French manuscript illuminations (Fig. 2); the same individualisation is evident in James Gray’s brass (Fig. 14). Commemoration is, of course, in many ways a form of vainglory as were portraits, which are intended to preserve one’s likeness even after death, and it is telling that many Renaissance portraits attempt to counteract the semblance of vainglory through an inclusion of death emblems or even a personified figure of Death (Figs 15-16). In their vanitas messages these portraits resemble the so-called doubledecker monuments with their combined images of earthly glory and man’s ultimate fate (see chapter 7), or the stained-glass glass panel that Henry Williams ordered in his own memory (Fig. 11), and thus serve both as a public warning and a focus for private meditation.50

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15. (Left) Hans Holbein the Younger (after), Portrait of Sir Brian Tuke with Death, [1532], panel, 49x38cm, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung.

Introduction

16. (Right) Posthumous portrait of Norwich mayor Robert Jannys (c.1480-1530) with Death, by an anonymous British artist, probably seventeenth century (copy?), Norwich Guildhall, City of Norwich.

The more terrifying the image of death, the more effective the contemptus mundi message it is meant to convey: this applies to the presentation of death in art as well as in literature. Yet death imagery could be used to send out different warnings. In his section on Pride in the same text on the Four Last Things, More again drew upon the image of the corpse as ‘stinking carien [...] layd in the ground & there lefte alone, wher euery leud lad wilbe bolde to tread on his hed’ – the ultimate image of pride humbled.51 Pride was a deadly sin that also featured in the Ars Moriendi where devils distract the dying man’s attention away from holy thoughts with reminders of his former glory in the form of three crowns (Fig. 6). The emphasis in the danse on each character’s individual sins from pride and anger to lust and avarice – often expressed in his or her own lines – demonstrably relate to the Seven Deadly Sins as presented in both text and image; in the Guild Chapel at Stratford the Sins were actually incorporated in the latter part of the Dance of Death mural.52 Yet this same death imagery could conversely be used to convey a message of ‘carpe diem’ and even an instrument towards seduction, as Andrew Marvell (1621-78) was to do in his poem To his Coy Mistress.53 In fact, the shift towards a more horrific presentation of death in both the danse macabre, the Three Living and the Three Dead, and funeral art suggests that the medieval moralists were already targetting what they considered to be insufficient preparation for death amongst their contemporaries.54 It is worth remembering that it is the hypocritical Pardoner who offers the exemplum about the death of three young revellers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In her study of the Spanish Dança Florence Whyte summed up the danse macabre as ‘a synthesis of many motives’.55 On such motif is the Seven Deadly Sins; the Ages of Man is another. Some sins were believed to pertain to particular stages of life, such as lust to youth – prime examples being the amoureux in the French danse and Lydgate’s amorous squire – and avarice to those of a more advanced age. Another adaptation of the danse is the French poem Le Mors de la Pomme of c.1468-70, the

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title of which is a play on the French words le mors (bite) and la mort; it combines encounters between la mort and the living with biblical stories of the Fall, the death of Abel, the Flood, the Last Judgement and Christ’s Passion.56 These examples show that the danse lent itself well to a variety of moralising contexts in both art and literature, and the juxtaposition of danse macabre pairs with carvings of the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy on the lost misericords of St Michael’s church in Coventry (see chapter 6) underlines that point. The danse macabre was thus a successful and popular theme that fitted in well with the moralising culture of the medieval period as well as beyond. The present thesis is unusual not just in tracing the danse in both literature and art but also in attempting to cross the linguistic barriers; a truly interdisciplinary and multilingual approach is still rare, and perhaps over-ambitious, yet badly needed for a greater understanding of the origins and development of the theme.57 Admittedly, it leaves unanswered the burning question of whether the French danse was preceded by a hypothetical lost Latin prototype, by the German Totentanz tradition, or by the Spanish dança de la muerte (see chapter 2 and Appendices): no firm dates can be attached to either the Totentanz or the dança, so this truly European debate is unlikely to die down or be resolved soon.58 Nonetheless, a new theory about the French danse presented in chapter 2 offers crucial new insights into the development of the theme. Research into the danse is nowadays largely confined to specialists and to members of the various danse macabre and Totentanz societies across Europe, with the focus narrowed down to the danse in a particular period, region, medium or genre. The subject does occasionally make an appearance in literature for the more general reader, but such articles often present a very basic overview by non-experts or are, at their worst, poorly researched and riddled with errors – perhaps inevitably as the subject is complex and the literature vast.59 In Germany in the 1980s there was a spell of interest in the occurrence of the danse in Britain, yet Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen’s interesting articles were published in German and are thus inaccessible to the majority of English-speaking scholars.60 There is still a serious language barrier in danse macabre studies, even if recent work by a handful of American and Canadian researchers has helped re-open the subject within Anglo-American scholarship. The steadily growing body of literature on the danse across Europe is almost too large for one person fully to take into account, but every contribution takes our understanding of this once popular theme another step forward. The revival of interest is a welcome development, notwithstanding a tendency to take basic questions too much for granted in favour of subjecting the danse to trendy new ideas. This thesis is based largely on articles that were written over a period of time for different types of readership; there is thus a degree of overlap while discussion of important aspects such as reception and satire may in places be brief. Furthermore, it does not aim to take any new theoretical position but instead addresses different aspects of the danse as well as related themes and motifs. The predominantly antiquarian research presented here is perhaps unfashionable, quite apart from the risks inherent in adopting a combined multilingual and interdisciplinary approach. Yet it is this approach that allows the present thesis – which is part of this author’s ongoing research – not only to highlight the former importance of the Dance of Death in medieval England but also to shed new light on its origins and evolution on the Continent. --oo0oo--

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Introduction

NOTES 1

No attempt has been made to regularise the spelling and punctuation of edited texts cited in this thesis. R.D. Drexler, ‘Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makaris” and the Dance of Death Tradition’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 13 (1978), pp. 144-58. Dunbar’s refrain ‘Timor mortis conturbat me’ had been used by earlier Middle-English poets, including John Audelay in his carol Dread of Death and Lydgate in his poem Timor mortis conturbat me. See S. Fein (ed.), John the Blind Audelay: Poems and Carols (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 302), Medieval Institute Publications (Kalamazoo, 2008), no. 24; H.N. MacCracken and M. Sherwood (eds), The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, part II, EETS, o.s. 192 (London, 1934), no. 73. 3 Wolgemut’s woodcut is conveniently copyright-free, so that it is frequently used to illustrate articles on medieval death and the danse macabre, e.g. in E.R. Huber, ‘“Oh Death!” Death, Dying, and the Culture of the Macabre in the Late Middle Ages’, website of The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester, , with thanks to Professor Rolf Bremmer for drawing my attention to this site, or as the opening illustration in H. Kokott, ‘Todeserleben und Totentänze im Mittelalter’, Der Deutschunterricht, 1 (2002), pp. 9-15, fig. 1. A detail of Wolgemut’s woodcut was also used on the cover of C. Platt, King Death. The Black Death and its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England (London, 1996). The same woodcut decorates the cover of the recent D. Vanclooster (ed.), Dansen met de dood (Brugge, 2008) and likewise serves as the sole illustration in the short chapter on the Totentanz in N. Ohler, Sterben und Tod im Mittelalter (1990, repr. Düsseldorf, 2004), pp. 263-68, which is in turn based mainly on G. Kaiser (ed.), Der tanzende Tod. Mittelalterliche Totentänze (Frankfurt am Main, 1983). 4 E. Gertsman, ‘Visualizing Death. Medieval Plagues and the Macabre’, in F. Mormando and T. Worcester (eds), Piety and Plague. From Byzantium to the Baroque (Kirksville, Missouri, 2007), pp. 64-89. 5 See the discussion in J. Tomaschek, ‘Der Tod, die Welt(zeit)alter und die letzten Dinge. Bemerkungen zum “Tanz der Skelette” in Hartmann Schedels Weltchronik von 1493, in R. Hausner and W. Schwab (eds), Den Tod tanzen? Tagungsband des Totentanzkongresses Stift Admont 2001 (Anif/Salzburg, 2002), pp. 229-49. 6 The author of the Weltchronik text, Hartmann Schedel, annotated this woodcut in his personal handcoloured copy with his own verses, beginning with the rubric ‘TENDIMUS · HVC · O[MN]ES : HAEC · DOMVS · VLTIMA’ (transl.: We are all going there, this is our final abode [i.e. the grave]), with further ruminations on the necessity of death (‘MORTIS NECESSITAS’) in the blank space on the verso side: see A. Wilson, assisted by J.L. Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976, repr. Amsterdam, 1978), pp. 155, 214. 7 For a facsimile of Marchant’s 1485 edition, see Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 70-107; unless stated otherwise, all quotations from the French danse macabre in this thesis are based on this edition. For Marchant’s 1486 edition (including the Danse Macabre des Femmes), see P. Champion, La Danse Macabre. Reproduction en fac-similé de l’édition de Guy Marchant Paris 1486 (Paris, 1925). 8 ‘Distorti’ is translated in the matching German verses as ‘ungeschaffen’, i.e. misshapen creatures. In the Latin verses it is hard to decide whether to interpret mors as death or personified Death in each case. 9 The idea of performativity – with particular emphasis on movement, gesture and body language – is discussed by Elina Gertsman ‘Pleyinge and Peyntynge: Performing the Dance of Death’, Studies in Iconography, 27 (2006), pp. 1-43, based on chapter 3 of her unpublished 2004 DPhil. dissertation. 10 A. Schröer, ‘The Grave’, Anglia, 5 (1882), pp. 289-90, l. 16. R. Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), pp. 83, described the fragment as having ‘a cleverness, which is neither typically Anglo-Saxon nor typically medieval: it plays with the conceit of the grave as a house’. Other Middle English poems also play upon the idea of the grave as one’s last abode, such as the short poem Wen the turuf is thi tuur (Cambridge, Trinity College MS 323) published in C. Brown, Religious Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1932), no. 30. 11 See also K. Jankofsky, ‘A View into the Grave: “A Disputacion Betwyx þe Body and Wormes” in British Museum MS Add. 37049’, Taius, 1 (1974), pp. 137-59, with thanks to Dr Julian Luxford for providing me with a copy of this paper. 12 F.J. Furnivall (ed.), Hoccleve’s Works, I. The Minor Poems, in the Phillipps MS. 8151 (Cheltenham) and the Durham MS. III.9., EETS, e.s. 61 (London, 1892, repr. 1937), XXIII, How to Learn to Die, l. 295. Hoccleve discussed his intention to translate the Latin treatise Scite mori in his Dialogue with a 2

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Friend, XXI, ll. 204-40. The idea of the danse macabre as a mirror is also discussed in J.H.M. Taylor, ‘Un miroer salutaire’, in J.H.M. Taylor (ed.), Dies Illa: Death in the Middle Ages, Proceedings of the 1983 Manchester Colloquium, Vinaver Studies in French, 1 (Liverpool, 1984), pp. 29-43. 13 K.S. Guthke, The Gender of Death: A Cultural History in Art and Literature (1997, transl. Cambridge, 1997), esp. chapter 2 ‘The Middle Ages: The Unfortunate Fall’, but also pp. 21-22, 118-22 and figs 12-13; see also L.P. Kurtz, The Dance of Death and the Macabre Spirit in European Literature, Publications of the Institute of French Studies, Inc. (New York, 1934), chapter 13. 14 I. Gollancz (ed.), Death and Liffe. A Medieval Alliterative Debate Poem in a Seventeenth Century Version (London, 1930), ll. 162, 159-60. The connection between woman and death was very strong in medieval culture: after all, Eve had brought death to mankind through the Fall in Paradise. 15 Guthke, Gender of Death, pp. 71-75 and fig. 8; also A. Tenenti, La vie et la mort à travers l’art du XVe siècle (Paris, 1952), pp. 20-23. 16 Illustrated in T.S.R. Boase, Death in the Middle Ages: Mortality, Judgment and Remembrance (London, 1972), fig. 91. See also the facsimile edition by C.M. García-Tejedor, The Book of Hours of Joanna of Castile (Barcelona, 2005), pp. 285-88. For the Berlin miniature, see C. Kralik, ‘Änderungen in der Andachtspraxis und die Legende der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten in spätmittelalterlichen Handschriften’, in U. Wunderlich (ed.), L’art macabre, 6, Jahrbuch der Europäischen TotentanzVereinigung (Düsseldorf, 2005), pp. 134-47, at pp. 141-43 and fig. 4; painted on a separate page, this miniature may have been a later insert. 17 F. Warren (ed.), with introduction and notes by B. White, The Dance of Death, edited from MSS. Ellesmere 26/A.13 and B.M. Lansdowne 699, collated with the other extant MSS., EETS, o.s. 181 (London, 1931, repr. 2000). Quotations from this edition will be referenced in the text with E for the Ellesmere and L for the Lansdowne version. 18 D.A. Fein, ‘Guyot Marchant’s Danse Macabre. The Relationship between Image and Text’, Mirator (August 2000), pp. 1-11, n. 8. Both instruments can be found in the Totentanz edition attributed to Heinrich Knoblochtzer, which was based on Marchant’s edition: see the woodcuts of the Dumherr, Pferner and bose Monch in Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 124, 126 and 166. Knoblochtzer’s edition features an unusually wide variety of musical instruments when compared to the earlier Heidelberg blockbook where many of the dead dancers play no music at all: see the facsimile of this ‘Oberdeutsche vierzeilige Totentanz’ in Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 276-329. This blockbook is usually dated 1465 but an earlier date of 1458-65 is proposed in P. Layet, ‘Die bimediale Münchner Totentanzhandschrift Xyl. 39’, in U. Wunderlich (ed.), L’art macabre, 1, Jahrbuch der Europäischen Totentanz-Vereinigung (Düsseldorf, 2000), pp. 80-96, at p. 95. A bagpipe is also often carried by one of the shepherds in medieval Adoration scenes. 19 B. Schulte, Die deutschsprachigen spätmittelalterlichen Totentänze. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Inkunabel ‘Des dodes dantz’. Lübeck 1489, Niederdeutsche Studien, vol. 36 (Cologne, 1990), pp. 136-43. 20 The story is discussed in J.M. Clark, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Glasgow, 1950), pp. 106-7; it is set in the time of Emperor Henry II (r. 1002-24). For Mannyng’s Middle-English exemplum of the ‘hoppyng’ dancers of ‘Colbek’, which he based on a shorter version in William of Waddington’s Anglo-Norman Manuel des Pechiez, see F.J. Furnivall (ed.), Robert of Brunne’s ‘Handlyng Synne’, EETS, o.s. 119, 123 (London, 1901, 1903), ll. 9015-9260. 21 K. Meyer-Baer, Music of the Spheres and the Dance of Death: Studies in Musical Iconology (1970, repr. New York, 1984), p. 271. 22 See R. Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes: die mittelalterlichen Totentänze und ihr Nachleben (Bern/Munich, 1980), esp. pp. 24-26, 39-42, and also chapter 14 on the Dance of Death in Meyer-Baer, Music of the Spheres, esp. pp. 298-305. In medieval culture music often served as a link between Satan and the Deadly Sin of Luxuria. 23 An apt visual comparison is made with the skeleton playing the flute at the start of the Lübeck Totentanz scheme in Vanclooster, Dansen met de dood, p. 41. 24 Furnival (ed.), Handlyng Synne, ll. 4885-88. 25 See also Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 40 and figs 23-24. 26 The Castle of Perseverance, ll. 3424-25, in M. Eccles (ed.), The Macro Plays: The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom, Mankind, EETS, o.s. 262 (London/New York/Toronto, 1969), as quoted amongst several references to the theme in Middle English literature in A. Breeze, ‘The Dance of Death’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 13 (Summer 1987), pp. 87-96, at p. 89. If the play indeed originated in Norfolk or Lincolnshire one might suspect the influence of Lydgate’s poem.

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27

Introduction

Kurtz, Dance of Death, pp. 215-16, mentions a reference to a ‘danse douloureuse’ in a chronicle entry for 1421 and another to ‘la dance’ in relation to the plague in a poem by Eustache Deschamps (d. c.1406). 28 G. Hasenohr-Esnos (ed.), Le Respit de la Mort par Jean le Fevre, Société des Anciens Textes Français, (Paris 1969), p. 113, l. 3078. 29 Clark, Dance of Death, p. 93. 30 J.H.M. Taylor, ‘The Dialogues of the Dance of Death and the Limits of Late-Medieval Theatre’, Fifteenth-Century Studies, 16 (1990), pp. 215-32; E. Gertsman, ‘Pleyinge and Peyntynge: Performing the Dance of Death’, Studies in Iconography, 27 (2006), pp. 1-43. 31 See, for example, the discussion in P.S. Spinrad, The Summons of Death on the Medieval and Renaissance English Stage (Columbus, 1987), chapter 4, pp. 68-85. Although the Dance of Death is frequently mentioned in this study, what is lacking is the comprehensive understanding of the theme that could have done justice to the impact it clearly had on English drama of the period. The same applies to P. Tristram’s Figures of Life and Death in Medieval English Literature (London, 1976), where the discussion of the theme is largely confined to pp. 167-73 with much attention being given to Holbein’s woodcuts, even though they postdate Lydgate’s poem by a century. 32 Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, figs 4-7; also H.M. Bloem, ‘Doodsvoorstellingen in de late middeleeuwen’, in L. van Beeck et al. (eds), ‘Met het oog op de dood’, studium generale-bundel Katholieke Universiteit Brabant (Tilburg, 1988), pp. 74-92, at p. 83 and fig. 5. A different kind of connection with death occurs on the tympanum on the west front of Strasbourg Cathedral where a skeleton representing Adam in his grave rests beneath Christ on the cross, with thanks to Robert Didier for drawing my attention to this example. 33 See E.P. Hammond, ‘Latin Texts of the Dance of Death’, Modern Philology, 8 (1911), pp. 399-410; H. Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche Totentanz: Entstehung - Enwicklung - Bedeutung (1954, revised edn Cologne/Graz, 1968), esp. pp. 38-43, 323-26, and by the same author ‘Vadomori’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 124 (1995), pp. 257-64. 34 Quoted from the so-called Paris version in Rosenfeld, Mittelalterliche Totentanz, p. 324, ll. 17-18. 35 S.G. Fein, ‘Life and Death, Reader and Page: Mirrors of Mortality in English Manuscripts’, Mosaic, 35:1 (2002), pp. 69-94. 36 J.A. Goodall, ‘Death and the Impenitent Avaricious King. A Unique Brass Discovered at Frenze, Norfolk’, Apollo, 126 (October 1987), pp. 264-66; the brass was shown in the 1987 V&A exhibition Witness in Brass, cat. 205. The scene was discovered on the back of an epitaph to George Duke, Esq. (d. 1551), which was re-engraved in a workshop in Bury St Edmunds, although the reverse may have been the product of an earlier Norwich workshop. 37 P. Ariès, The Hour of Our Death (1977, transl. London, 1981, repr. 1983), and Images of Man and Death (1983, transl. Cambridge/London, 1985). 38 Platt, King Death, fig. 69 and p. 178-79, using the Stow quotation in Florence Warren’s Dance of Death edition with the remark that the scheme was ‘long thought to have been a casualty of the Great Fire of London in 1666, but probably lost much earlier’. Platt’s bibliography does not even include Clark’s Dance of Death. 39 R. Marks, Stained Glass in England during the Middle Ages (London 1993), p. 84 and pl. 67. The window was recorded in 1712 by the antiquarian John Kilpatrick as still showing the emperor, pope, cardinal and other professions, albeit with most of the figures defaced (Church Notes for St Andrew’s church dated September 1712, Norwich Record Office, MC 5000/14, with thanks to Fred Kloppenborg). For the Stanford panel, see R. Marks, ‘Henry Williams and his “Ymage of Deth” Roundel at Stanford on Avon, Northamptonshire’, Antiquaries Journal, 54 (1974), pp. 272-74. 40 N. Llewellyn, The Art of Death. Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual c.1500-c.1800 (London, 1991, repr. 1997), chapter 4, pp. 19-27, but esp. p. 19, and figs 4-5 and 11-12. Although the time-frame of Llewellyn’s book might have been the excuse for excluding earlier medieval examples of the theme, it does not stop him from including prints by Thomas Rowlandson (1817) and Richard Dagley (1827) that technically fall outside his chosen period. 41 This sense of surprise was shared by Clark (p. v), whose 1950 Dance of Death is still the last survey of the theme in English. Although Douce’s study (see below) was not published until 1833, it was based on material researched and written up forty years earlier. 42 F. Douce, Holbein’s Dance of Death, Exhibited in Elegant Engravings on Wood, with a Dissertation on the Several Representations of the Subject (1833, repr. London, 1858), p. 201. 43 The Stratford Dance of Death had probably been painted in the early sixteenth century as part of the provisions in the will of Sir Hugh Clopton (d. 1496) for the rebuilding of the nave of the chapel. The

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account of John Shakespeare (father of the playwright) includes the entry ‘Iten payd for defasyng ymages in ye chappell ijs’; see C. Davidson, The Guild Chapel Wall Paintings at Stratford-upon-Avon, AMS Studies in the Renaissance, 22 (New York, 1988), p. 10 and 11. Davidson cites no evidence for his claim that the Dance of Death was not whitewashed over in 1563-64 and one may wonder whether a mural that included an image of the pope would have received Protestant approval in this period. 44 ‘About the body of this chaple was curiously paynted the Daunce of Deathe, commonly called the Daunce of Powles, becawse the same was sometyme there paynted abowte the cloysters on the northwest syd[e] of Powles churche, pulled downe by the Duke of Somarset, tempore E. 6’, as quoted in W. Puddephat, ‘The Mural Paintings of the Dance of Death in the Guild Chapel of Stratford-upon-Avon’, Transactions of the Birmingham Archaeological Society, 76 (1958), pp. 29-35, at p. 30. 45 Explicit references to the Dance are hard to find in Shakespeare’s work according to H. Morris, ‘The Dance-of-Death Motif in Shakespeare’, Papers on Language and Literature, 20 (1984), pp. 15-28, which draws mainly upon Holbein’s woodcuts as a likely visual source of inspiration. However, see S. Oosterwijk, ‘“Alas, poor Yorick”: Death, the fool, the mirror and the danse macabre’, in S. Knöll (ed.), Narren – Masken – Karneval. Meisterwerke von Dürer bis Kubin aus der Düsseldorfer Graphiksammlung ‘Mensch und Tod’, exhibition catalogue (Regensburg, 2009), pp. 20-32, esp. n. 47. Jaques’ line ‘I am for other than for dancing measures’ in As You Like It, V, iv, 192, could be a hitherto unrecognised allusion to the danse. Shakespeare must have been aware of the fact that the property he bought in Stratford in 1597, known as New Place, had been built by the town’s former benefactor Sir Hugh Clopton. 46 I am grateful to Professor Anthony Edwards for this suggestion. 47 The only extant complete copy of Day’s 1569 edition (Lambeth Palace Library, 1569.6, known as ‘the Queen’s own copy’ because it is believed to have belonged to Elizabeth I) comprises a danse macabre cycle of hand-coloured woodcuts illustrating thirty-six male and twenty-six female characters (fols 148r-156v and 166r-172r, respectively). The impact is somewhat lessened by the wholesale repetition of the male cycle on fols 157r-165v. See also H.S. Herbrüggen, ‘Ein anglikanischer Beitrag zur Geschichte des englischen Totentanzes: John Days Christian Prayers and Meditations, 1569’, in H.-J. Müllenbrock and A. Klein (eds), Motive und Themen in englischsprachiger Literatur als Indikatoren literaturgeschichtlicher Prozesse: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Theodor Wolpers (Tübingen, 1990), pp. 73-93. 48 For danse macabre influences on tomb iconography, see S. Oosterwijk, ‘“The sodeyne vyolence of cruel dethe”: Death and Danse Macabre Iconography on Tomb Monuments’, Actes du 11e Congrès de l’association ‘Danses macabres d’Europe’ (Meslay-le-Grenet, 2003), pp. 209-22. 49 Sir Thomas More, unfinished treatise on ‘The Last Things’, in A.S.G. Edwards, K.G. Rodgers and C.H. Miller (eds), The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 1 (New Haven/London, 1997), pp. 128-82, at pp. 139-40. There is earlier evidence for More’s fascination with death; he is also said to have designed in his youth an allegorical painted cloth for his father’s house, which included amongst nine ‘pageaunts’ an image of Death described in the accompanying verses as ‘foule vgly lene and mysshape’; see More, ‘Pageant Verses’, in Edwards et al., Complete Works, pp. 3-7. 50 Just as cadaver effigies (see chapter 7), such portraits might be commissioned by the sitters themselves as reminders of their own mortality. An interesting counterpart to the window in Stanford is the almost contemporary pair of stained-glass trefoils dated 1502, which show in one trefoil Death on an emaciated horse aiming his arrow at the figure of the Nuremberg provost Dr Sixtus Tucher (1459-1507) standing at his open grave in the matching trefoil; the panels may have originated from a window in Tucher’s house in the Grasersgasse where he spent most of his time amongst his books after resigning his post in 1504. The panels are preserved in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg; the original design drawings by an artist active in Albrecht Dürer’s circle also survive. The drawings only show the Latin inscription for Death and the year 1502. The complete inscriptions on the panels themselves read ‘CAVE MISER . NE MEO TE CONFIXVM . TELO . IN HOC TETR[IC]O COLLOCEM FERETRI LECTO’ (Take care, unfortunate one, that I do not lay you, pierced by my arrow, on this hard bed of the funeral bier) for Death and ‘QVID . MI[NARIS QV]OD . HOC MONENTE . SEPVLCRO : ECIAM . SI . VELIS . CAVERE . NEQVEO :’ (Why threaten me with this waiting grave, against which, even if you wished it, I cannot defend myself) for Tucher. See Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg 1300-1550, exhibition catalogue (New York/Munich, 1986), pp. 286-289, cat. nos 116-117. 51 More, ‘The Last Things’, p. 156. 52 Davidson, Guild Chapel Wall Paintings, p. 7 and n. 35; also K.T. Parker (comp.), The Guild Chapel and other Guild Buildings of Stratford-Upon-Avon, Based on the Research of Wilfrid Puddephat (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1987), p. 8. The scheme appears to have juxtaposed the sins with the following

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characters: physician, Pride, merchant, Envy, artificer, Wrath, labourer, Avarice, sergeant of Office, Sloth, juror, Gluttony, minstrel and Lust. 53 See Jankofsky, ‘A View into the Grave’, esp. pp. 137-38. 54 Comparisons between a medieval ‘memento mori’ outlook v. the more cheerful ‘carpe diem’ motto, which is popularly associated with the Renaissance, create a false impression of an abrupt change in thinking. The exhortation ‘memento mori’ could in any case be construed differently: Clark, Dance of Death, p. 2, pointed out that whereas the words were a call to repentance for medieval people, to the ancients they meant ‘Eat, drink and be merry’. 55 F. Whyte, The Dance of Death in Spain and Catalonia (Baltimore, 1931), p. 85. 56 L.P. Kurtz (ed.), Le Mors de la Pomme, Publications of the Institute of French Studies Inc. (New York, 1937). The poem survives in a single illustrated manuscript copy (BnF, ms fr. 17001). 57 An edited volume in English on the danse macabre and related themes by a range of international scholars in the field, provisionally entitled Mixed Metaphors, is currently being prepared in collaboration with Dr Stefanie Knöll. 58 There are persistent but incorrect claims about the earliest Totentanz examples, such as an impossibly early date of 1312 for the Klingenthal mural in Basel (based on a misreading of the date 1512) or 1383 for a scheme in Münden, Westphalia, that was not a Totentanz at all; see Warren, Dance of Death, p. 97. Even more persistent, because his monograph is still regarded outside Germany as the standard text on the subject, is Hellmut Rosenfeld’s purely hypothetical ‘Würzburg Totentanz’ of c.1350, which has long been dismissed by German scholars (see, for example, Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 276-77 and n. 1, or the critical review by T.F. Mustanoja in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 57 (1956), pp. 162-63) but is still perpetuated in recent studies such as E.E. DuBruck and B.I. Gusick (eds), Death and Dying in the Middle Ages, Studies in the Humanities, 45 (New York/Canterbury, 1999), p. 300. 59 For example, A.-J. Donzet, ‘Les danses macabres’, Monuments Historiques, 124 (Dec. 1982-Jan. 1983), theme issue on ‘L’architecture et la mort’, pp. 49-52, or J. Cohen, ‘Death and the Danse macabre’, History Today, 32 (August 1982), pp. 35-40. The latter is an example of the worst variety, containing a mixture of unreferenced claims, misinterpreted illustration material, and a very inadequate brief bibliography that does not even list Clark’s monograph. Similarly, A. Kinch, ‘The Danse Macabre and the Medieval Community of Death’, Mediaevalia, 23.1 (2002), pp. 159-202, offers a wide-ranging but ultimately superficial discussion of the danse macabre marred by sloppy research and factual errors, such as the suggestion that the ‘fresco’ on the ‘outer wall of the Cemetery of the Innocents’ showed the dead ‘playing musical instruments, dancing, making conversation’ (pp. 171-72), or the mistaken assumption that the two Totentanz murals in Basel were situated ‘in the local cathedral’ (p. 193). 60 See the Bibliography for articles by Herbrüggen.

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CORRIGENDA Since publication of this article I have discovered that Les Saints Innocents in Paris was not a Franciscan convent, as claimed on p. 66 and in some of the danse macabre literature: this error has been rectified in chapter 2. My translation of the verses from Jehan le Fèvre’s poem Respit de la Mort on p. 62 also needs amending to read as follows: Je fis de Macabré la dance qui toutes gens maine a sa tresche et a la fosse les adresche, qui est leur derraine maison

I made the dance of Macabré who leads all people in his train and directs them to the grave, which is their last abode.

Note 48 should read: See S. Oosterwijk, ‘“The sodeyne vyolence of cruel dethe”: Death and danse macabre iconography on tomb monuments’, Actes du 11e Congrès International d’études sur les Danses macabres et l’art macabre en général (Meslay-le-Grenet, 2003), 209-22, and also the examples ...

CHAPTER 2

‘Depicte ones on a walle’: the Danse Macabre in late-medieval Paris The Dance of Death poem by the Bury monk-poet John Lydgate (c.1371-1449) might seem the obvious starting point for an investigation into the occurrence of the danse macabre in Britain. Yet Lydgate’s poem is a translation of the ‘exawmple’ which he ‘fownde depicte ones on a walle’, a reference to the wall-painting in the cemetery of Les Saints Innocents in Paris.1 King Charles VI (1368-1422) was dead and the French capital under Anglo-Burgundian control when this celebrated Danse Macabre mural was painted and when Lydgate visited the city not long after; he claims to have been persuaded by ‘frensshe clerkes’ there to translate what he called ‘Macabrees daunce’ (E:22, 24). This chapter aims to establish how the political situation impacted on the Parisian mural scheme and its accompanying poem.2 The almost overnight fame of the Danse Macabre at Les Innocents suggests that there must have been other reasons for such keen interest in a theme that at first sight does not appear to offer anything very different from the conventional warnings about vanity and mortality in literature and art of this period. Directly or indirectly, the English occupation of Paris and of much of France may have played a major role in the mural’s creation and repute, and thereby have influenced the development of the theme and its spread across Europe. One of the first literary adaptations of the mural in Paris, Lydgate’s poem itself soon came to be incorporated in a painted scheme on the walls of Pardon Churchyard at Old St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Both sets of paintings at Paris and London have long since been lost, but it is important to remember that the French as well as the English poem were once accompanied by paintings, and vice versa. Only by understanding the visual and literary model that inspired Lydgate’s poem can we hope to appreciate what the danse macabre meant to contemporaries both in England and on the Continent.

The historical and political context Henry V’s victory at Agincourt in 1415 and his subsequent conquest of Normandy were to have a major impact on the kingdoms of England and France. In 1426, when Lydgate is believed to have visited Paris, the city had been under Anglo-Burgundian control for six years as a result of the Treaty of Troyes, signed on 21 May 1420; it would remain so until 1436.3 The Treaty of Troyes itself was ultimately the result of the murder by the dauphin’s men of the Burgundian duke John the Fearless at a supposed negotiation meeting between the dauphin and the duke on the bridge at Montereau-fault-Yonne on 10 September 1419. This murder was in turn an Armagnac retaliation for the assassination on John’s orders of Charles VI’s brother Louis, duke of Orléans, in Paris in 1407.4 Louis was later to be commemorated by his grandson, King Louis XII, in a (now lost) wall-painting in the family chapel at Les Célestins, which showed the duke about to be despatched by Death’s dart – the epitome of sudden death and an image likely to have been derived from the danse macabre theme that made its first recorded appearance in these turbulent times (Fig. 1). Thus, in its divided state under the nominal rule of Charles VI, whose recurrent bouts of insanity

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(probably a form of schizophrenia) since 1392 had left him a helpless tool in the hands of his weak-willed queen and the rival political factions, France appeared to have reached its nadir in the early 1420s. 2. (Right) Map of France in 1429: the dark shade represents areas under English control. 1. (Below) Wall-painting commemorating Louis, duke of Orléans, in the family chapel at the monastery of Les Célestins, Paris, commissioned in the late fifteenth century by his grandson Louis XII and destroyed c.1779. Antiquarian Gaignières drawing (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS GoughGaignières 1, fol. 1r).

Henry V formally entered Paris as regent of France and heir to the throne on 1 December 1420, confirming his status by marrying Catherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI and his wife Isabeau of Bavaria. Their only child, the future Henry VI, was born on 6 December 1421. Henry V died at Vincennes on 31 August 1422, aged only around 35; he was followed on 21 October by the ailing Charles VI, who had been king of France for over forty-two years. These two royal deaths in quick succession left the supposed dual kingdom with a joint king who was not yet a year old but who at least survived, unlike so many medieval infants – the Danse Macabre mural was to feature both a dead king and an infant in his cradle. Young Henry’s interests had to be protected so his paternal uncle John, duke of Bedford (1389-1435), was appointed regent in France while actual power in England was shared by Henry Beaufort (1375?-1447), bishop of Winchester and ‘cardinal of England’, and the king’s younger uncle, the ‘good Duke Humphrey’ of Gloucester (1391-1447).5 The king himself was placed under the protection of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (1382-1439), as his tutor in 1428 – the same earl who may have summoned Lydgate to Paris in 1426, as the next chapter will show. Meanwhile, Charles VI’s disinherited son the dauphin, later Charles VII (1403-61), set up a rival ‘kingdom of Bourges’ with the help of foreign troops, including many from Scotland.6 His coronation at Rheims on 17 July 1429 after Joan of Arc’s relief of the city was followed by Henry’s own two coronation ceremonies as king of England at Westminster Abbey on 6 November 1429 and as king of France at Notre-Dame in Paris on 2 December 1431.7

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Throughout this period the third Valois duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless’s son Philip the Good (1396-1467) – a political opportunist – seldom visited Paris and seems to have shown no desire to play a key role in the government of the city or the country, although he did marry off his sister Anne to the duke of Bedford in 1423.8 Bedford’s rule at least offered the citizens of Paris a period of relative peace and stability, but its trade position was threatened by Rouen in wealthy Normandy. Bedford also took steps to found a university at Caen, obtaining authorisation from pope Martin V on 31 March 1424 – a move that naturally caused concern in Paris, which prided itself on its university.9 France thus remained a seriously divided country with friction between Paris and Normandy within the Lancastrian camp, and with communication between the occupied capital and the ‘kingdom of Bourges’ officially forbidden except with special permission (Fig. 2).10 The Anglo-Burgundian alliance was weakened by the death in 1432 of Anne of Burgundy, who had been a capable intermediary between her brother Philip and her husband Bedford and who had enjoyed great popularity in Paris. In 1433 Bedford married sixteen-year-old Jacquetta de Luxembourg (niece of the unpopular Chancellor of France, Bishop Louis de Luxembourg) and settled in Rouen where he died on 14 September 1435. By then he had seen the tide turn irreversibly against the Lancastrian cause in France, partly because of insufficient support from England. The FrancoBurgundian Treaty of Arras between Charles VII and Philip the Good was sealed around the same time. Finally, in April 1436, the English were expelled from Paris, although they managed to hold on to Normandy until 1450. So this was Paris as Lydgate found it when he visited the city probably in 1426 (see chapter 3). As the map below shows (Fig. 3), the cemetery of Les Innocents was situated to the north of the Seine and the Île-de-France in the area where most of the English officials lived, including Bedford. Here he discovered the Danse Macabre mural on which he based his Dance of Death poem – newly painted and already considered remarkable enough to attract visitors who left a record of what they saw.

The Danse Macabre mural: location, painting and poem It was the earlier period of Bedford’s regency that saw the completion of the Danse Macabre wall-painting in the cemetery of Les Saints Innocents. The parish church of Les Innocents was situated in a key position on the rue Saint-Denis (the main thoroughfare from the Porte Saint-Denis to the north); its large cemetery ran along the rue de la Ferronnerie (which connected the former to the rue Saint-Honoré, the main thoroughfare from the Porte Saint-Honoré in the west), close to where Les Halles used to be and also in the vicinity of the hôtel de Bourgogne with its defence tower built by John the Fearless in 1409-11 (Figs 3-4).11 It was an ancient burial place, having originally served as a Merovingian necropolis, although there are no records that provide a date for the foundation or dedication of the later parish church. In the early medieval period, the development of Paris had been concentrated on the Île-de-France and the left bank. The subsequent expansion of the capital northwards on the right bank meant that, as the churchyard of the small new parish of Les Saints Innocents, the cemetery became part of a lively urban environment; King Philippe-Auguste is said to have ordered the construction of its outer walls in the late twelfth century.12 If the parish of Les Innocents itself was small, through donations of land it came to possess an extensive churchyard, which the importance of Christian burial might have made a potentially valuable commodity to the parish.13 This was not necessarily the case, however. Other parishes and institutions had an established (albeit frequently

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contested) right to use the cemetery for their own burials, including the hospital of Sainte-Catherine and the Hôtel-Dieu; as each of these employed their own vergers and, if they so wished, their own grave-diggers, this shared use brought no financial benefits to the parish itself.14 Because it was believed to contain soil brought back from the Holy Land that miraculously achieved decomposition of corpses within only nine days, Les Innocents became one of the most sought-after cemeteries in Paris, resulting in the erection of monuments, chapels, churchyard crosses, and cells for anchoresses in the churchyard.15 Situated at the heart of a thriving commercial district and with five doors giving access to its grounds, the cemetery also served as a popular meeting place where goods were bought and sold, and as an ideal setting for open-air sermons and other events, which would have made it hardly a true place of rest.16 3. (Left) Map of medieval Paris: the red arrow indicates the location of the church and cemetery of Les Saints Innocents. 4. (Below) Map of the cemetery of Les Saints Innocents, with the location of the danse macabre mural in the charnier des Lingères indicated in dark grey.

Because of a perennial lack of burial space typical of medieval cemeteries, Les Innocents offered only a temporary resting place to its dead – disregarding rank and status – before their remains were dug up and removed to the charnel houses situated above the arcaded galleries. Here, as evidenced by later illustrations, the piles of skulls and bones were clearly visible through the openings that allowed the circulation of air and thereby the desiccation of the remains.17 A miniature in the Cremaux Hours of c.1440 shows a near-contemporary image of such a charnel house (Fig. 5; compare Introduction, fig. 7): the skulls of the long dead almost seem to be watching the burial scene below through the apertures in the roof space.18 This type of environment would have been familiar to Lydgate whose Dance was to be displayed in another cemetery setting at Old St Paul’s Cathedral, which had its own charnel houses. The charniers at Les Innocents are mentioned in records from the early fourteenth century on. Some are known through inscriptions to have been founded by wealthy citizens such as Nicolas Flamel. He paid for the construction of the fourth gallery of the ‘vieux charnier’ in 1389 before founding a second one in the ‘charnier de la Vierge’ along the rue Saint-Denis in 1407; in the first bay of the latter was placed the tomb of Flamel’s wife Pernelle, who thus received a more privileged resting-place than the anonymous human remains overhead.19 Other gallery bays were likewise appropriated for family monuments and chapels, some of them closed off by gratings. The demolition of the thirteenth-century church of Les Innocents and its huge cemetery was authorised in 1786 amidst growing concern about the insalubrious

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effects of burial grounds in populated areas and also because of the delapidated state of the church fabric. The Danse Macabre mural itself, however, had been lost much earlier, probably in 1669 when the rue de la Ferronnerie was widened, although sources disagree.20 A painting of c.1570 by an unknown Flemish master, which is now in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, still gives an idea of the layout and overall appearance of the cemetery (Fig. 6). It shows the church in the background and in front a huge churchyard viewed from the west with galleries on the north, east and south sides, above which one can see the charnel houses with their contents clearly visible. It is even possible to glimpse the Danse Macabre on the back wall of the south gallery of the ‘charnier des Lingères’ on the right. The mural consisted of a continuous chain of dancers with the poem copied underneath, one stanza for each dancer: the scheme could be viewed from inside the churchyard through the open arcades.21 According to an anonymous source, the so-called manuscript of the ‘Epitaphier du vieux Paris’ dated 1663 (i.e. before the demolition of the wall), the Danse Macabre mural occupied ten or eleven bays: ‘Icy commence la Dance macabee [sic] qui dure 10 arcades en chacune desquelles y a 6 huitains dont le premier cy apres – les 4 dernieres arcades en ont 8’.22 Also shown inside the churchyard are some raised tombs and several churchyard crosses, as well as a covered platform towards the south-west corner, presumably for the use of preachers. 5. (Below) Burial scene in a churchyard with a charnel house in the background, miniature in the Cremaux Hours, French, c.1440 (London, BL, Add. MS 18751, fol. 163r).

6. (Above right) Church and cemetery of Les Saints Innocents, with the danse macabre mural visible through the arcades on the right, Paris, c.1570, painting by an unknown Flemish master, Paris, Musée Carnavalet.

The creation of the Danse Macabre scheme at Les Innocents had been sufficiently noteworthy to be recorded in the journal of events by the so-called ‘Bourgeois de Paris’ in the period 1405-49. A Parisian, the anonymous Bourgeois actually belonged to the clergy; he may well have been a canon of Notre-Dame and a member of the university.23 The Journal, which exists in a number of later manuscript copies (no autograph copy survives), offers a fascinating insight into life in Paris

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during this period; the author’s sympathies lay with the Burgundians but he appears to have largely approved of Bedford and his wife Anne. The church of Les Innocents and its cemetery are mentioned repeatedly in the Journal. The relevant entry about the Danse Macabre reads: ‘Item, l’an mil CCCC XXIIII, fut faicte la Danse Macabre aux Innocens, et fut commencée environ le moys d’aoust et achevée ou karesme ensuivant’.24 The completion of this large mural by Lent – the traditional period of abstinence and penance – suggests an apt deadline specifically chosen by the patron. The Bourgeois found a second occasion to mention the scheme in 1429 in connection with a sermon by a popular itinerant preacher, a Franciscan named Richard, who had previously inspired audiences in Troyes with his eloquence. It may be the Bourgeois’ references to this preacher, and perhaps the inclusion of a cordelier (Franciscan) amongst the characters in the Danse, that gave rise to the assumption by later authors (perpetuated in the ever growing danse macabre literature) that Les Innocents was a Franciscan cemetery whereas it actually belonged to a parish church, as explained earlier. Nonetheless, Franciscan preachers were apt to use such settings for their sermons, often to the chagrin of local incumbents; depictions of foxes preaching to geese on misericords and in marginalia are usually interpreted as a satirical comment on the preaching activities of friars,25 just as Chaucer mocked another eloquent member of the confraternity in his Summoner’s Tale. The danse would admittedly fit in well with Franciscan preaching so the theme and the order are frequently linked.26 The French scholar Emile Mâle even claimed that the theme must have originated in mimed sermons on death conceived by either a Franciscan or a Dominican.27 Brother Richard appeared in Paris some eight days after the arrival on 4 April 1429 of the duke of Burgundy and his train and preached a series of apparently very popular sermons against vanities and superstition from a high scaffold in the cemetery of Les Innocents near the area of the Danse Macabre mural: et après, environ VIII jours, vint à Paris ung cordelier nommé frere Richart, homme de tres grant prudence, scevant à oraison, semeur de bonne doctrine pour ediffier son proisme. Et tant y labouroit fort que enviz le creroit qui ne l’auroit veu, car tant comme il fut à Paris il ne fut que une journée sans faire predicacion. Et commença [le] sabmedi XVIe jour d’avril IIIIc XXIX à Saincte-Genevieve, et le dimanche ensuivant, et la sepmaine ensuivant, c’est assavoir, le lundy, le mardy, le mercredy, le jeudy, le vendredy, le sabmedy, le dimenche aux Innocens; et commençoit son sermon environ cinq heures au matin, et duroit jusques entre dix et unze heures, et y avoit touzjours quelque cinq ou six mil personnes à son sermon. Et estoit monté quant il preschoit sur ung hault eschauffaut qui estoit pres de toise et demie de hault, le dos tourné vers les Charniers encontre la Charonnerie, à l’androit de la Dance Macabre.28

The Bourgeois is quite specific about the location of Brother Richard’s sermons – and of the Danse Macabre – even if he is probably guilty of exaggerating the number of people attending. Brother Richard’s success run in Paris was short-lived. Having raised the suspicions of the English government, he fled the capital before his scheduled sermon on 1 May and thereafter embraced the dauphin’s cause, becoming a confessor to Joan of Arc; his defection greatly upset his Parisian followers.29 A manuscript dated 1436, which contains the Description de Paris by the Grammont-based scribe Guillebert de Metz (libraire to both John the Fearless and

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Philip the Good), also made reference to the scheme in the ‘cimetiere moult grant’ of the church of Les Innocents, explaining at the same time the nature of the cemetery: [...] la est ung cimitiere moult grant, enclos de maisons appellés charniers, la ou les os des mors sont entassés. Illec sont paintures notables de la dance macabre et autres, avec escriptures pour esmouvoir les gens a devocion. Lune partie du cimitiere appartient à leglise des Innocens, lautre partie est pour le grant hospital, et la tierce partie est pour les eglises de Paris qui nont point de cimetiere.30

The cemetery even featured as the setting for a stag hunt as part of the pageants to celebrate the coronation of Henry VI at Notre-Dame in December 1431, as noted by the Bourgeois. Young Henry, ‘lequel se nommoit roy de France et d’Angleterre’, had taken up residence at the royal abbey, and thus entered the city through the Porte Saint-Denis. He watched a performance of mystery plays before moving to Les Innocents: ‘et là fut fait une chace d’un cerf tout vif, qui fut moult plaisant à veoir’.31 In later years, the poet François Villon (1431-after early 1463) is likely to have drawn inspiration from the Danse Macabre wall-painting at Les Innocents.32 These early references to the cemetery indicate in what a key location the earliest known Danse Macabre mural was set. Yet a look at the plan and the anonymous painted view of the cemetery (Figs 5-6) shows that the mural only took up a small proportion of the available wall-space in the arcaded gallery of but one of the charnel houses that lined this extensive churchyard on all sides. Painted onto the back walls of the gallery, partly hidden behind the supporting outer columns, and located on the south side of the cemetery where the sun never directly lights up the paintings, the mural might easily have been missed by a casual visitor, especially as the cemetery appears to have contained other noticeable features, including further wall-paintings as implied by Guillebert de Metz. The attention that the Danse attracted from French and foreign observers alike so soon after its completion is quite remarkable and presupposes either exceptional artistry or a subject that was quite out of the ordinary. Whereas the Bourgeois gives a specific date for its execution he does not mention the artist or workshop responsible nor, even more intriguingly, the patron responsible for paying what was clearly a large, impressive and therefore expensive project. This is not unprecedented, but nonetheless curious if one considers the stone sculpture of the Three Living and the Three Dead on one of the south portals of the church, which featured a lengthy French verse inscription on the cornice, recording that it had been commissioned in 1408 by John, duke of Berry.33 One source even claims that this sculpture commemorated the duke’s nephew Louis, duke of Orléans, who had been murdered the previous year – something that the inscription itself makes no mention of.34 It is improbable that Berry also commissioned the Danse Macabre scheme at Les Innocents: the duke died in 1416.35 In contrast, we do know who paid for the slightly later Dance of Death schemes at Pardon Churchyard in London and in the Guild Chapel at Stratford, viz. the London Town Clerk John Carpenter and the former London mayor Hugh Clopton, respectively, both wealthy civilians (see chapter 3). A seemingly obvious explanation in the case of Les Innocents might be that it was the church authorities who paid for the mural in their own cemetery, but the parish was small and far from wealthy. If there was a private patron instead, why was the name not recorded either by contemporaries or by later generations when the Danse made it into print? It is almost inconceivable that there was no record whatsoever of the generous donor(s) – whether private or institutional: a Parisian guild or confraternity is one possibility – who paid for the execution of this famous mural with what would

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appear to be a very worthy, didactic message aimed at all who visited this public and popular location. After all, it would have been the perfect means to perpetuate one’s memory as a pious benefactor. The author of this earliest recorded Danse Macabre poem in the mural at Les Innocents is likewise unknown; Lydgate mentions the Parisian origins of his poem, but not the author. Some scholars have suggested the theologian Jean Gerson (13631429), Chancellor of the University of Paris, who was at this time in exile in Charles VII’s ‘kingdom of Bourges’, together with his deputy Gérard Machet.36 This attribution is not generally accepted and Gerson’s known anti-Burgundian stance makes it less likely that a poem by him would have been displayed in such a prominent location not far from the hôtel de Bourgogne during the Anglo-Burgundian occupation of Paris, though the poem might have been written by someone in his circle.37 Yet the question of authorship also hinges on the date one wishes to assign to the original poem, just as the date depends on the identity of the anonymous author: the poem itself appears to offer no internal evidence on either. Other possible authors have been suggested, but without firm evidence; only the line ‘Je fis de Macabré la dance [...]’ in Le Respit de la Mort of 1376 may indicate an earlier poem by Jehan Le Fèvre.38 The idea that the French poem in the mural at Les Innocents may ultimately be based on an earlier (Latin?) prototype carries some weight, for it will become evident not only that its overall scheme is too well developed to be a completely novel invention but also that it contains some anomalies which make it likely that the poem was adapted from an earlier version.39 In any case, the question of origins does not just relate to the French poem but to the whole concept of a ‘dance of death’ (or of the dead). Lydgate himself appears to refer to the author of the French poem as ‘Machabre the Doctoure’, which has only fuelled speculation about the origins of the very term ‘macabre’, although it matches the label ‘Machabre docteur’ in one early manuscript copy of the French poem (BnF, ms.fr. 14989).40 The French printer Guy (or Guyot) Marchant instead labelled the seated scholarly figures in the first and last woodcuts of his Danse Macabre edition the acteur, while some early French manuscript copies of the text refer to the second figure as le maistre.41 Whoever the original author of the French poem may have been, it was probably the furore caused by the Danse Macabre wall-painting executed at Les Innocents that helped spread the theme throughout France and further afield. It is unfortunate that, due to the loss of the original mural, scholars have to rely largely on the woodcut edition of the Danse Macabre that was first published by Marchant in Paris in 1485 (see Appendices 1 and 3). Although this work is generally believed to offer a fairly reliable impression of the poem and the overall appearance of the scheme as painted on the walls beneath one of the charnel houses at Les Innocents, evidence suggests a degree of updating in terms of dress and appearance of some of the figures, one example being the late fifteenth-century style Italian armour of the connestable.42 Mâle already noted that the shoes worn by the figures in Marchant’s woodcuts are not the souliers à la poulaine with very long pointed toes that were worn from the early fifteenth century until c.1480, but instead the later square-toed shoes fashionable in Marchant’s day.43 This may not even have been a conscious updating by the printer and his chosen artist, however, because murals were subject to fading and weathering, and therefore often retouched or even completely repainted. A claim that the plants and grasses strewn across each scene are not likely to have been a feature of the original mural but instead belong to the printer’s repertoire is debatable.44 As we shall see, plants and grasses do occur in illustrations of the Danse in some early manuscripts and may be based on the mural’s original appearance.

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The chain of dancers that ran along the back wall of the ‘charnier des Lingères’ across at least ten bays was impossible to reproduce in book format so that Marchant was obliged to divide the original chain of dancers into two pairs per page, framed by arches. The designer of the woodcuts may have taken further liberties with the poses of the characters, especially at the start or the end of each arcade, for whereas there is usually physical contact between the figures within each arcade there is nothing to link them to those in other arcades. Instead, the dead dancers at the start of each arcade are either turned towards their next victim or are shown holding a large dart or grave-diggers’ attributes, such as a spade and a coffin-lid.45 The idea of a continuous chain of figures suggest that at this time the dead dancers in the danse macabre were regarded as dead counterparts of the living (le mort as also in Marchant’s edition) rather than as personifications of Death himself (la mort), just as is the case in the story of the Three Living and the Three Dead. Mâle illustrated this idea of dead and living counterparts very aptly through the text of the emperor, who regrets that he must die and ‘Armer me faut de pic, de pelle / et d’un linceul’ (ll. 11-12); in Marchant’s woodcut he is grasped by a shroud-clad mort who carries these same implements across his right shoulder, much like a mirror image of what the emperor (himself still armed with a sword and orb) will soon become.46 Admittedly, there may well have been earlier printed editions of the Danse, but none are extant and only a single, incomplete copy of Marchant’s 1485 edition survives.47 There are no extant manuscript copies of the text predating Marchant’s edition that contain illustrations.48 The evidence that we have of the lost mural is relatively sparse and Lydgate’s poem is therefore all the more important as early testimony to its popularity and overall composition (see Appendix 3). Although in many ways an adaptation rather than a faithful translation, Lydgate’s Dance of Death belongs to the French danse macabre tradition of which the mural in Paris is the first firmly datable manifestation. Yet there are two rival traditions which require brief discussion here because of the light they may shed on some compositional anomalies in the French poem to be explained later in this chapter.

The Spanish dança de la muerte and the Latin-German Totentanz The idea of a Latin prototype for the danse holds great appeal for many scholars in this field, but it raises the question where this Latin version might have originated, if there was indeed one single point of origin. If the poem incorporated in the mural at Les Innocents was itself in some ways an adaptation of an earlier version, as will be discussed below, a comparison with other danse macabre traditions may reveal potentially significant similarities and differences. Whereas Lydgate himself named the mural in Paris as the source for his Dance of Death, the situation is less clear with regard to the Spanish Dança General de la Muerte poem (see Appendix 5). The author of the Dança is unknown and its date a matter for debate: proposed dates range from the mid fifteenth to the late fourteenth century, depending on conflicting theories that the Dança was actually based on the French Danse Macabre or that both were derived from an earlier common prototype.49 There is also no pictorial tradition for the Dança in Spain. The earliest Dança General poem shares many characteristics with the French Danse, such as the octave verse format and a strict alternation of clerical and lay characters, many of which also occur in the Danse, including the condestable. The Dança starts with a prologue and a dialogue between Death and the preacher. New are such typically Spanish characters as the rabbi and the Moorish alfaqui versed in Islamic theology

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and law, illustrating how the danse could be adapted to local circumstances. There are no female characters, apart from a summons by Death to two unspecified maidens before the Dança proper commences with the pope and the conventional hierarchy of church and lay figures. One other difference with the French poem is that, instead of opening the dialogue, la muerte responds to each figure’s lament and only addresses the next victim in the last line of his stanza. Yet the mort’s stanzas to the Carthusian, monk, friar and hermit also open with an address to preceding characters, just as the first four lines of the mort’s stanza for the pope are aimed at the reader, which are probably remnants from an earlier French composition that was later revised. This is not the place for a wider discussion of the Spanish dança, which requires further research: important here are the similarities it shares with the French Danse and the range of characters. The same applies to the Latin-German Totentanz tradition, especially in view of the possibility of an original Latin prototype of the danse. Only one early Latin poem survives, but it has German origins; in fact, it is a combination of two Latin lines per character, terse in style but effective (see Appendix 6), followed by four German lines that are a free and expanded translation of the same. It is not a dialogue like the Danse Macabre, however: there are no stanzas for Death itself. The earliest surviving manuscript copy of this Latin-German text (Heidelberg University Library, Cpg 314, fols 79r-80v) dates from c.1443-47; it does not feature any illustrations but a note at the beginning of the text (‘vide de hoc in albo codice de commendatione animarum a principio picturas’) suggests that the scribe was copying an earlier, no longer extant, illuminated model.50 Like the French poem, the Latin-German Totentanz has a prologue and an epilogue with a preacher addressing the reader in both Latin and German (Theutunice). This is followed by a lament from a series of characters each facing Death, whose presence (and music) is merely implied in the words of his victims, and probably also originally in the accompanying illustrations. An actual dialogue with four added German lines for Death occurs in later versions, e.g. in the Heidelberg blockbook of c.1458-65 where the Latin lines are absent.51 The twenty-four characters in the Latin-German Totentanz at first sight appear to follow a familiar hierarchical order (see Appendices 4 and 6), starting with the pope (papa) and emperor (caesar), but anomalies occur almost immediately with the third character: the empress (caesarissa). She is one of three female characters, together with the noblewoman (nobilissa) and the mother (mater); the latter concludes the cycle. There is no strict adherence either to the alternation of clerical and lay figures that we find in the French Danse, although this may indicate a corruption of the original composition. The version found in Heidelberg Cpg 314 belongs to a group of variant texts collectively known as the ‘oberdeutsche vierzeilige Totentanz’ or OBD to distinguish it from other Totentanz types, such as the mitteldeutsche tradition published in Heinrich Knoblochtzer’s Totentanz mit figuren around 1488, which was modelled on Marchant’s Danse Macabre edition.52 Probably the most influential OBD variant was the so-called Groß-Baseler Totentanz mural in the lay cemetery of the Dominican convent at Basel, which comprised fifteen male and female characters more than the twenty-four found in Cpg 314 and also per stanza four new lines for Death, thereby changing the monologue into a dialogue proper.53 This celebrated scheme with a total length of nearly 60 m is believed to have been painted soon after the plague epidemic of 1439; frequently restored over time, the wall-painting was largely destroyed in 1805 and only fragments survive. Another early scheme with OBD verses, sadly lost during World War II, was the mural of c.1440 in the Wengen convent at Ulm.54 If these dates are correct, the Basel and Ulm murals predated manuscript copy Cpg 314.

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The variations within the German tradition raise many questions, such as whether the Totentanz started as a poem which then became part of a mural scheme, or whether the idea of a mural came first – perhaps inspired by the fame of Danse at Les Innocents – and the poem was specially composed for it. The fact that the German stanzas are based on the Latin two-line monologues and were then expanded to create dialogues suggests that the Latin lines preceded the German version; the original twenty-four characters were probably increased to thirty-nine for the monumental mural scheme at Basel.55 It is equally unclear whether the Cpg 314 text constitutes an earlier, shorter version or merely an incomplete rendition of the larger scheme of thirty-nine characters found at Basel; the Heidelberg blockbook version contains only the same twenty-four characters found in Cpg 314. Whether there is any relation between the Latin Totentanz verses and the presumed Latin prototype underlying the French Danse cannot be established: they may have developed separately, perhaps inspired by a shared but lost proto-source. Earlier (German) claims that the Latin Totentanz text in Cpg 314 is the earliest danse macabre scheme of all – even as early as 1350 in date – can no longer be taken seriously, although the possibility that the French Danse Macabre was preceded by a German Totentanz tradition or by the Spanish Dança General de la Muerte is still alive and well.56 Without new evidence this truly European debate about the origins of the scheme is unlikely to be resolved soon. Even so, a comparison with the order and characters in the Latin-German Totentanz does prove useful when discussing the French and English poems, as this study will show.

The dissemination of the Danse Macabre in manuscripts and print While uncertainty remains about the danse macabre’s origins prior to the creation of the mural in Paris, the situation is further complicated by the loss centuries ago of this painted scheme and the problem that we cannot rely on Marchant’s 1485 edition being an accurate representation. This section will present a brief overview of other appearances of the danse – as both text and image – in manuscript and print in order to try and obtain a better idea of the original scheme and the theme’s later popularity. Ɣ The Danse Macabre in manuscripts Not long after the completion of the mural in Paris, manuscript copies of the poem began to appear.57 The scheme at Les Innocents is specifically named in at least two early copies, which suggests that the poem was then firmly associated with the mural. The first (BnF, ms.lat. 14904) features the sentence ‘Prout habetur apud Sanctum Innocentem’;58 it is dated 1429 and also contains works by Jean Gerson and Nicolas de Clemanges. The second (BnF, ms.fr. 25550) is a composite manuscript, with the Danse copied by two different scribes: it contains the sentence ‘Dictamina Choreae macabre prout sunt apud innocente[m] Parisii’.59 Another early manuscript copy on paper (BnF, ms.fr. 14989) was copied in or soon after 1428; this date is based on the evidence of its watermarks and the fact that the manuscript also contains the anti-dauphinist propaganda poem Division des Orleanois contre les Anglois, which was written after the death in 1428 of Thomas Montacute, earl of Salisbury.60 An intriguing detail is that this copy once belonged to Philip the Good. Comparisons between some of these early copies appear largely to confirm the text and the original order of characters in the Parisian Danse as reproduced by Marchant in his 1485 edition: the main difference is that the advocat and the menestrel probably preceded, rather than followed, the curé and the laboureur

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(see Appendix 3).61 Moreover, ms.fr. 14989 names the maistre as lastrologien (as in Marchant’s 1486 edition) and the usurer’s companion as lomme qui emprunte.62 Whereas we have additional early manuscript sources to judge Marchant’s printed text by, it is more difficult to find earlier visual evidence for the lost paintings at Les Innocents. The wars and the removal of the French royal court from Paris inevitably had an impact on the production of art, including manuscript illumination.63 Nonetheless, the continued presence in Paris of the university, the church, trades and administration meant that there remained a steady demand for books. Some English patrons also shared a taste for luxury manuscripts, although this does not necessarily imply that such books were specially commissioned by them when they could also be adapted or bought second-hand.64 Thus, English owners might end up with psalters and books of hours of the Use of Paris instead of Sarum; while Paris Use need not point to a French patron, ‘The combination of French manufacture and Sarum Use is a sure indication of an English patron’, as one author noted.65 Two extant illuminated books of hours with marginal danse macabre decorations are believed to date to the time of the English occupation of Paris or shortly thereafter, yet both have received surprisingly little attention.66 The first features elements of the danse as marginal decorations on two of its pages at the start of the Office of the Dead (BnF, ms. Rothschild 2535, fols 108v-109r, Fig. 7). The patron is unknown and the attribution of this manuscript is still a matter for debate, but the accepted date is c.1430-40 with a preference for the earlier part of the decade on the basis of dress (see below).67 The foliate borders of the two facing folios of the Rothschild manuscript illustrate the problem of adapting this mural scheme to a book format. The result is a group of living and dead representatives somewhat haphazardly arranged on several ‘islands’ strewn with gold flowers not dissimilar to the background of Marchant’s woodcuts (Appendix 1). The treatment of the foliate decoration is very different on both pages, with painted foliage on fol. 108v and penwork rinceaux on fol. 109r.

7. Danse macabre as marginal decoration in a Parisian book of hours, c.1430 (Paris, BnF, ms. Rothschild 2535, fols 108v-109r: blank borders cropped in this illustration).

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Running clockwise, the sequence starts underneath the burial miniature on fol. 108v with a dead figure carrying a coffin on the left shoulder, who pulls the pope along towards the right, i.e. in the opposite direction of that taken by the figures in Marchant’s woodcuts and probably also in the original mural. Then follows not another mort but the bearded emperor, who holds an orb in his left hand and his sword aloft in his right; significant is his heraldic mantle, which will be discussed later. Next, the cardinal finds himself manhandled by two dead dancers, one dark-skinned and one pale-skinned. Above this group stands a crowned beardless king wearing a royal mantle decorated with fleurs-de-lis. The traditional order is overturned in the next scene by a fashionably dressed couple moving towards the left, the woman in her horned headdress hovering behind the man. This rare female presence in the French danse at this period may explain the inclusion of some female figures in Lydgate’s Dance of Death poem, as will be discussed in chapter 3; she may be not a character in her own right but rather the attribute of the amoureux.68 The woman’s dress is helpful for dating purposes as very wide sleeves went out of fashion very rapidly after 1430: this means either that the Rothschild manuscript should be dated not much later than 1430 or that the illuminator closely modelled his figures on those in the wall-painting of 1424-25 at Les Innocents, or both.69 At the top of the page a single mort stretches both his arms between a labourer with a shovel across his shoulder and an infant in his cradle on the right, immediately above the miniature (see also chapter 5). The sequence on fol. 109r runs anti-clockwise from the bottom left corner where a dead dancer greets a bishop whose back is turned towards the other dancers. To the right, another mort seems to mock the physician as the latter holds a urine sample against the light in his raised left hand; his counterpart in Marchant’s woodcut scrutinises a phial in his right. The bareheaded knightly figure above wears a blue heraldic tabard that is very much of the period but completely different from the fancy feathered hat and long mantle in a later style worn by Marchant’s knight. The bearded hermit with his rosary and book resembles more closely his counterpart in Marchant’s edition. Finally, the last mort is shown digging a grave at the top of fol. 109r. If we accept a date of c.1430 for this manuscript, this would make the marginal decoration on fols 108v-109r a rare early visual example of the danse from a period when more such schemes may have been created but since lost. The decorative scheme contains an intriguing mixture of similarities with Marchant’s woodcuts and variations, particularly in the introduction of a female character; we shall see later whether this implies more faithful adherence to the mural at Les Innocents than shown by Marchant’s woodcuts with their often updated fashion styles. What is also important to note is that the theme was already sufficiently familiar to stand on its own as a decorative scheme without the need of explanatory texts other than the context of the Office of the Dead, which did not have a fixed iconography, however.70 The second illuminated book of hours of a similarly early date (New York, Morgan Library, MS M.359, Figs 8-9 and Introduction, fig. 2) contains an extraordinarily large danse macabre cycle of fifty-seven marginal scenes, nearly twice as many as at Les Innocents (Appendix 7). This luxury manuscript is believed to have been illuminated in Paris c.1430-35 by the Bedford Master and his workshop (fl. 1415-30): typical of the Bedford style are the small secondary scenes contained in marginal medallions in the outer borders of the pages.71 Unfortunately, there are no coats of arms or contemporary inscriptions that could help identify the original patron; the earliest recorded owner is Charles de Bourgueville (1504-1593), sieur de Bras, of Caen – the Norman city held so long by the English.72 The Use of Rome may indicate a member of the clergy since the original patron and the calendar points to a Paris

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origin, but it must date from the time of the English occupation as suggested by the inclusion of typically English saints, e.g. St George (23 April) in gold letters.73

8-9. Danse macabre medallions in the outer margins of a Parisian book of hours of c.1430-35: (left) the constable of France with his ceremonial sword and (right) the infant in his cradle (New York, Morgan Library, MS M.359, fols 127r and 151r).

The Office of the Dead opens on fol. 119v with a large miniature of a funeral service, complete with a sequence of marginal scenes illustrating burial and mass that continues on fols 120r-122v (Appendix 7). The actual danse macabre cycle starts on fol. 123r with the traditional author or doctor seated at a lectern, but there is no second doctor at the end of the cycle, which finishes instead with the infant (Fig. 9). The author is followed on fol. 123v by the pope in a circular medallion flanked by two mort figures, as is the emperor on fol. 124r (Fig. 11): a number of figures are shown with just a single dead dancer, sometimes in a half-medallion. The morts are not so much dancing with the living as coercing them, which is also suggested by the sergeant’s words in the Danse poem: ‘Je ne scay quel part eschapper: / Je suis pris: deca et dela’; yet in these isolated scenes the impression of force seems stronger than may have been the case in the original chain of dancers at Les Innocents where each living figure would also have been flanked by two morts. The dead in M.359 carry no musical instruments or other attributes, except for a dart in the last medallion (Fig. 9). Their bodies are at different stages of decompostion, as indicated by their colours varying from shades of grey to light and very dark brown, just as in ms. Rothschild 2535 (Fig. 7); this may also have been a feature of the mural at Les Innocents. All victims in the M.359 danse cycle are male, as is typical of the French Danse: quite unusual, however, is the preponderance of the clergy and the choice of figures. The cycle opens with the conventional ordering of pope, emperor, cardinal, king, but the eleventh character of the knight templar – or, perhaps more likely in France in this period, a knight of St John (fol. 128v) – is surprising. Moreover, there are numerous abbots, friars and monks in a variety of habits belonging to orders that in some cases defy identification, including a Trinitarian (recognisable by his red and blue cross), an Alexian or Cellite(?), and a Servite(?).74 This remarkable range and number of religious figures cannot be explained by just a need to fill fifty-seven medallions. While the inclusion of such diverse lay characters as the goldsmith and the blacksmith is noteworthy – neither occurs in the Danse Macabre poem – it is more likely that the

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choice of religious characters in this book of hours contains clues about the identity of the original (clerical?) patron, whether English or French. A final feature that should be mentioned about the MS M.359 danse is the setting in which each encounter of victim and mort(s) is presented: there are schematic landscapes, patterned backgrounds, but also examples of figures placed instead in an everyday setting befitting their occupation or status. We thus find the apothecary in his shop with pots on the shelves behind him (fol. 142r; Introduction fig. 2); the money-changer with scales, weights and coins on his desk (fol. 144r); the goldsmith at his table (fol. 145r); the ploughman following his horse or ox (fol. 146v); the blacksmith at his anvil (fol. 149v); and the partly-swaddled infant in his cradle (fol. 151r, Fig. 9). These individualised settings do not match the stylised landscapes of Marchant’s woodcuts or of ms. Rothschild 2535, which may or may not have been based on the mural at Les Innocents. Tables and basic props do occur in later German Totentanz woodcuts, but only to help identify characters, e.g. a pestle and mortar for the Apotheker or a desk for the Wirt (host). The unique copy of the poem Le Mors de la Pomme of c.1468-70 contains danse macabre scenes in everyday settings complete with tiled floors, but it is dated several decades later than MS M.359.75 The variety of settings in MS M.359 may have been an individual choice of the miniaturist and not based on the mural at Les Innocents. Later still, Holbein was to use such settings to even greater artistic effect in his woodcuts. The decorative cycle in Morgan MS M.359 constitutes important danse macabre evidence, and not just because of its early date. Its unparalleled range of characters and its unusual variation in backdrops may have deviated from the mural that provided the original inspiration for this decorative programme. Yet just like the border decoration in BnF ms. Rothschild 2535, the M.359 cycle is both an early adaptation of the danse as popularised through the mural and an indication of how familiar the theme had become to artists and patrons alike, not just as a poem. In addition, this cycle contains some characters and iconographic details that may shed further light on the scheme at Les Innocents, as we shall see. ƔThe Danse Macabre in print Marchant’s 1485 edition is admittedly the first known printed Danse to have been published in France, but it is not inconceivable that the mural at Les Innocents inspired earlier printed versions that could have provided further evidence if they had but survived. At least two printed German Totentanz editions preceded Marchant’s.76 It would be curious, though not impossible, if Paris – home not just to possibly the oldest and most famous Danse Macabre scheme in art but also, as a university town, to many publishers – had not produced an earlier printed edition when manuscript copies had been in circulation for decades.77 It should be noted, however, that printing was still a risky business in the fifteenth century, especially as books that relied heavily on illustrations required an initial investment in design and woodcuts that the publisher would need to recoup.78 Knowing the risks, many printers understandably re-used woodcuts whenever they could, even within the same publication: for example, 645 different woodcut designs were used to produce the 1809 illustrations in Anton Koberger’s 1493 Liber Chronicarum (see Introduction, fig. 1).79 The Danse Macabre, on the other hand, required special illustrations for each of its characters and these could not be used elsewhere; an exception was the image of the acteur, which could easily adapt to other contexts, e.g. as an author portrait (see chapter 3).

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Guy Marchant’s origins are unknown. He may have moved to Paris by 1482 where he was to run a very successful independent printer’s workshop in the Sorbonne area.80 He appears to have specialised in Latin humanist and theological tracts aimed at an academic and religious readership, but he also recognised a market for moralising texts on the subject of death: his publication of at least five editions of De arte bene vivendi beneque moriendi tractatus (or Ars Moriendi) in 1483, 1491, 1494, 1497 and 1499 suggests that he was a good judge of a profitable print-run and ready to reprint in cases of continuing demand.81 His first Danse Macabre folio edition – dated 28 September 1485 in the colophon – was so successful that a new expanded edition followed on 7 June 1486, which also comprised Les dis des trois mors et tros [sic] vifz.82 This second edition furthermore contained six new woodcuts depicting four skeletal musicians (Introduction, fig. 3) and ten new characters not occurring in the original version (Fig. 20), as well as Vado mori verses above the Danse Macabre woodcuts.83 Then, one month later on 7 July 1486, Marchant expanded this second edition with the Danse Macabre des Femmes, albeit with only one additional woodcut for the queen and the duchess and otherwise re-using the same two woodcuts for the acteur (the latter with the corpse figuring as la royne morte) and that of the four skeletal musicians – perhaps a sign of haste on the part of a publisher eager to meet a continuing demand for such macabre literature.84 This revised second edition also contained Les dis des trois mors et tros vifz, Le débat du corps et de l’ame and La complainte de l’ame damné. A fully illustrated Danse Macabre des Femmes was published by Marchant on 2 May 1491, but with new woodcuts by an inferior artist and the added figures of the bigotte and sotte, which were not part of the original poem usually attributed to Martial d’Auvergne (1430/5-1508).85 The success of Marchant’s 1485 Danse Macabre edition made it inevitable that other printers would follow suit, such as Antoine Vérard. The mural at Les Innocents was no longer the model nor, perhaps, the source of inspiration. New versions ranged from luxury editions on vellum to cheaper pirate copies.86 In fact, there were at least seven different Danse Macabre editions by Marchant alone in the period 1485-91, including a Latin version, and the theme continued to appear in print as late as 1533.87 The absence of Danse Macabre copies in private inventories after c.1525 and the considerable stock still held by some booksellers as late as 1551 may indicate that interest in the theme had waned by the second quarter of the sixteenth century, as one author has claimed.88 However, the use of the danse as a decorative motif in printed books of hours and the publication of Holbein’s woodcut series at Lyons in 1538 suggest that the danse remained very much alive and open to new interpretations.

History or convention: a new interpretation of the Danse Macabre The evidence of the text, Marchant’s woodcuts and the medallion on fol. 123r of Morgan MS M.359 (chapter 3, fig. 6) suggests that the mural at Les Innocents opened with the docteur or acteur who explained the didactic intentions of the Danse. The reader is addressed as ‘O creature roysonnable’ and the danse will serve him (or her) as a ‘miroer’ in order to show that ‘Mort nespargne petit ne grant’; in fact, Marchant described his 1486 edition on the title page as a ‘Miroer salutaire pour toutes gens: Et de tous estatz’.89 In this purported mirror contemporaries were thus expected to recognise themselves as well as the society they lived in, and to learn the ultimate fate of all estates, starting with the highest ranks – ‘Tu vois les plus grans commancer’ – after which the Danse proper opens with the pope. This lesson is confirmed by the roy

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mort towards the end of the poem, who reminds readers that nobody is spared: all ‘estats diuers’ will become ‘viande a vers’, food for worms – even a crowned king. The Danse may have been an apposite theme for a cemetery setting, but its highly conventional message does not quite explain why the scheme at Les Innocents excited such keen interest, unless there was another reason that has so far not been recognised. Social satire, which is evident throughout the Danse, cannot have been the sole reason for its popularity; contrary to the acteur’s claim, the danse is in fact elitist in its choice of characters and fails to include craftsmen or workers other than the laboureur. There may be yet another reason – one dictated by the political circumstances of the period when the mural was first created in Paris only a few years after the deaths of Henry V and Charles VI. To understand the Danse better, therefore, it is imperative to investigate some of its key characters, especially among the upper ranks, to ascertain if they were not merely conventional social stereotypes but also contained political resonances that contemporaries would have understood. ƔThe dead king First of all, albeit nearly last in the scheme, there is the roy mort who is presented in Marchant’s woodcut as a naked corpse with his crown toppled beside him; the caption ‘Le roy mort que vers mignent’ in BnF, ms.fr. 14989 indicates that, unlike Marchant’s woodcut, the original mural depicted the dead king as being devoured by worms.90 Admittedly, the fall of kings was a familiar image from representations of the Wheel of Fortune, especially in contemporary manuscripts of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (see chapter 3, fig. 8).91 The roy mort also resembles the type of cadaver or transi monument that had begun its spread across northern Europe at this time with a similar moral about mortality and vanitas (see chapter 7).92 Notwithstanding the purportedly conventional message about death being the ultimate fate of both ‘bons et peruers’, upon completion of the mural by Lent 1425 few beholders can have forgotten the demise of two kings in quick succession in 1422: Henry V at Vincennes – an unexpectedly early death of the foreign invaderturned-heir apparent – but especially Charles VI in his room in the Hôtel de St Pol. The long-suffering monarch had not been seen in public much in his later years, but his subjects had shown their love for him by rejoicing and shouting ‘Noel!’ when the king and queen returned to Paris from a sojourn in Senlis in mid September 1422.93 At the time of his death on 31 October, he had been king of France for over forty-two years and the common people of Paris greatly mourned their ‘good King Charles’, as the Bourgeois records at length.94 For two or three days after his death, his body had been laid out in his bed at the Hôtel de St Pol for all to see, his face uncovered, while during the funeral procession the customary funeral effigy in the king’s likeness (cf. Fig. 16) had been carried along on top of the coffin under a gold canopy like the body of Christ at the feast of Corpus Christi, according to the Bourgeois: Item, il estoit hault comme une toise, largement couché en envers en ung lict, le visaige descouvert ou sa semblance, couronne d’or, tenant en une de ses mains ung sceptre royal, et en l’autre une maniere de main faisant la benediction de deux doyz, et estoient dorez et si longs qu’ilz advenoient à sa 95 couronne.

The image of the roy mort in the mural could be interpreted both as a generic image of (royal) pride after a fall and as a specific reference to a dead king of France: after all, the cemetery was situated along the road to the royal mausoleum at SaintDenis (Figs 3-4) where the Bourgeois claimed that more than eighteen thousand

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people went from Paris to honour Charles VI. The roy mort stanza may even be a later interpolation for it does not fit into the overall dialogue pattern and it occurs in neither the Totentanz nor the Dança. Meanwhile, the dual kingdom was left to be ruled nominally by a mere toddler not much older – at the time of the completion of the mural, at least – than the enfant snatched from his cradle slightly earlier in the mural. ƔThe pope As the highest church dignitary the pope is the obvious figure to start the Danse Macabre proper, yet the papacy was not above criticism, especially at the time of the mural’s completion less than a decade after the end of the Great Schism (1378-1417). The move of the papacy from Rome to Avignon in 1309 had ultimately resulted in an embarrassing situation where two rival antipopes ruled the (divided) Christian nations from Avignon and Rome simultaneously, and this was made worse in 1409 with the election of Alexander V as an alternative third antipope at the Council of Pisa; a solution that failed when his rivals Benedict XIII and John XXIII refused to abdicate. To say that the co-existence of three antipopes undermined the authority of the papacy would be an understatement. Only in 1417 at the Council of Constance (1414-18) was the situation resolved through the election of Martin V (1368-1431) as sole pope with English support. The new pope refused the French offer of Avignon as his papal residence in favour of Rome where he eventually arrived in 1420. The question is whether there are resonances of this recent papal ignominy in the Danse at Les Innocents. The invitation by the mort to the pope to start the dance ‘comme le plus digne seigneur’ is tinged with irony if one considers his papal dignity and the church’s stance on dancing (see Introduction). This impression is strengthened when the pope proceeds to describe himself as God on earth, ‘qui suis dieu en terre / Jay eu dignite souuerainne / En leglise comme saint pierre’ – biting satire that is often not recognised.96 As we shall see in chapter 3, Lydgate’s Death likewise protests too much in a stanza even more pseudo-reverential in tone than its French model. Public censure of the papacy is usually linked to the Reformation a century later, although there was already a flourishing of anti-clerical satire by the late fourteenth century. One author claimed that the pope was not usually criticised in danse macabre or Totentanz schemes until Niklaus Manuel’s lost mural of 1516-19, which was painted before the 1528 Reformation and iconoclasm in Berne.97 Yet in the accompanying poem believed to be by Manuel, the pope mocks the world’s foolish reverence for his seeming holiness, as if he alone were responsible for barring people from heaven.98 His words are really an expanded echo of the pope’s ostensible holiness as conveyed in the terse words of the Latin Totentanz poem (Appendix 6), ‘Sanctus dicebar’ (I was called holy) – a seemingly innocuous phrase yet at the same time quite ambiguous, and also found thus in other related German Totentanz texts.99 The Knoblochtzer text goes even further with ‘Got was ich off erden genant’ (On earth I was called God), echoing the French poem’s ‘qui suis dieu en terre’.100 There is no reason to suppose that the figure of the pope at Les Innocents was meant to be read as a satirical portrait of a specific pope, least of all the autocratic Martin V. Yet there are parallels: it was alleged in the seventeenth century that the figures of the pope, emperor and king in the Groß-Baseler Totentanz of c.1440 represented the later antipope Felix V (1383-1449), Emperor Sigismund (1368-1437), and his Habsburg son-in-law and successor Albrecht II (1397-1439), although this can no longer be verified.101 Moreover, the king in Holbein’s woodcut is claimed to be a portrait of Francis I of France (Fig. 17) while the emperor could be Maximilian; the portly beardless pope in Manuel’s mural of 1516-19 may have resembled pope Leo X

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(1513-21); and on the Dresden Totentanz relief of 1534-37 the emperor is usually identified as Charles V, the king as Ferdinand I, and the duke as George the Bearded of Saxony (who commissioned the frieze) followed by his sole surviving son John, both wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece.102 The inclusion of historical figures – alive and dead – is thus not unique, which is an important consideration when we turn to the emperor and the king in the Danse Macabre. ƔThe emperor There is nothing controversial in the text for the emperor in the Danse, unless it is the almost excessive courtesy with which the mort addresses him as ‘le non pareil du monde / Prince et seigneur grant emperiere’. The irony mainly hinges on the fact that the emperor must abandon his imperial insignia (‘la pomme dor ronde: / Armes: ceptre: timbre: baniere’) and arm himself instead with ‘pic’, ‘pelle’ and ‘linceul’ (pick-axe, spade and shroud) – in other words, he must become like a typical mort himself; his ‘grandeur mondaine’ is over. Lydgate’s Dance of Death follows the French poem very closely, while the Latin Totentanz presents the emperor as an allconquering emperor who in turn is himself conquered by Death, so that he can no longer be called emperor or even man, ‘non Caesar, non homo dictus’. Yet even if the text contains no personal references, there is the possibility that the image of the emperor in the mural was a cryptoportrait of a real-life counterpart, if we can trust the presumed identification of Sigismund in the Groß-Baseler Totentanz. Sigismund must have sprung to mind to contemporaries viewing the image of the emperor in the mural in the 1420s. Ambitious and powerful, Sigismund was politically important to both France, England and Burgundy. His rise to a number of royal titles and the imperial throne was somewhat tortuous; a son of the Holy Roman emperor Charles IV of the House of Luxembourg, he officially succeeded his elder (already deposed) half-brother Wenceslas as German King upon the latter’s death in 1419, but was only crowned emperor in Rome in 1433.103 His sister Anne of Bohemia had been Richard II’s wife and in 1411 there had been a rapprochement with England when Henry IV had sought imperial support against France.104 The emperor saw himself rather as a mediator, however: his ultimate goal was the cessation of the Hundred Years War and the establishment of a Christian alliance to liberate the Holy Land.105 After the Battle of Agincourt Sigismund paid a long visit to England in 1416 to try and make peace between England and France; on 15 August he sealed a treaty of perpetual friendship with Henry V at Canterbury. (This was followed in October by a rendezvous between Henry and John the Fearless at Calais, a meeting that probably resulted in a promise by John not to oppose further English intervention in France.106) Sigismund’s later (unsuccessful) attempts to curb the growing Burgundian power was to cause conflict with John and with the latter’s son Philip the Good. Marchant’s woodcut, ms. Rothschild 2535 and Morgan MS M.359 (Figs 10-11) all show the emperor with a beard, as the Paris mural may well have done: Sigismund also wore a beard, as seen in a contemporary portrait by an unknown artist in Vienna (Fig. 12).107 Sigismund was an exceptionally well-travelled emperor; he had been on crusade and also paid lengthy visits to France, England and Italy. The image of the hirsute emperor would have been recognisable throughout Europe not just because of Sigismund’s travels but also through his depiction in painting and sculpture, e.g. on seals, especially when combined with imperial heraldry and insignia; physiognomic likeness itself is a debatable issue in medieval portraits.108 From the late fourteenth century, an increasing interest in portraiture is also evident in the creation of various painted and sculpted gravenreeksen representing the counts of Flanders and of

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Holland, which at Courtrai and Haarlem were later updated with additional portraits of the dukes of Burgundy.109 According to recent research, Sigismund moreover featured in a remarkable number of cryptoportraits.110 The question is whether the image of the emperor at Les Innocents was one such example, hitherto unrecognised. One vital detail in Marchant’s woodcut is the emperor’s robe decorated with double-headed eagles, a device that Sigismund was to adopt as the emperor’s official coat of arms from 1433, though this heraldry had been unofficially associated with the emperor from the thirteenth century on: the colours are always a black double-headed eagle on a gold field (or a double-headed eagle sable).111 In depictions of the Nine Worthies from the fourteenth century on, this heraldry was assigned to Julius Caesar.112 A bearded and fierce-looking figure of Julius Caesar in a wall-painting of the Nine Worthies of the 1430s in the sala baronale of the Castello della Manta (Piedmont, Italy), recognisable by this traditional coat of arms, is believed to be a cryptoportrait of the then reigning emperor Sigismund (Fig. 13).113

10. The emperor (detail) in a danse macabre border decoration in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430 (Paris, BnF, ms. Rothschild 2535, fol. 108v).

11. The emperor in a danse macabre medallion in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430-35 (New York, Morgan Library MS M.359, fol. 108v).

12. (Above) Anon., Portrait of Emperor Sigismund, 1420s, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

13. Wall-painting of the Nine Worthies (detail), 1430s, sala baronale, Castello della Manta (Piedmont, Italy): on the far left Julius Caesar(cryptoportrait of emperor Sigismund?) and second from the right emperor Charlemagne with his shield hanging on the tree on his right.

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In the fictitious Nine Worthies heraldry, as illustrated in the same mural in the Castello della Manta (Fig. 13), Charlemagne’s coat of arms is a combination of the imperial arms on the dexter side and on the sinister the fleurs-de-lis that signal him as King of the Franks (or a eagle sable impaling azure semy of lis or).114 The emperor in Morgan MS M.359 (Fig. 11) wears an outer mantle with a reversed version of this heraldry, albeit without the fleurs-de-lis. However, the fork-bearded emperor in MS Rothschild 2535 (Fig. 10) is dressed in an heraldic mantle that matches the traditional heraldry of Charlemagne, except that the eagle on the dexter side is unmistakably double-headed (or a double-headed eagle sable impaling azure semy of lis or). Nothing in the French poem points to Sigismund in particular, but the image of the emperor in the mural might have been a cryptoportrait with heraldry and hairstyle as determining factors, if we accept that the figure in ms. Rothschild 2535 was modelled on that at Les Saints Innocents. Yet although intriguing, these two combined factors remain far from conclusive: Charlemagne was also traditionally depicted with a beard, and his fictitious heraldry may even have been used deliberately to preclude associations with the still living emperor Sigismund. Such ambiguity may have been intentional, but there is one crucial difference with Sigismund’s presumed cryptoportrait in the Groß-Baseler Totentanz: when that was painted Sigismund was dead. ƔThe king In both Marchant’s woodcut and ms. Rothschild 2535 (Fig. 14), the crowned king wears an ermine collar over a mantle decorated with fleurs-de-lis. Yet wheras the former has shoulder-length hair and a short beard, the latter is beardless with shorter hair and a lined face. The king in Morgan MS M.359 (Fig. 15) is likewise beardless but has rather bland – even stereotypical – features, while his ermine-lined mantle has been left plain blue like the dexter half of the emperor’s mantle (Fig. 11).

14. The king (detail) in a danse macabre border decoration in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430 (Paris, BnF, ms. Rothschild 2535, fol. 108v).

15. The king in a danse macabre medallion in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430-35 (New York, Morgan Library, MS M.359, fol. 125r).

The heraldry in all three images (if we ignore the absence of fleurs-de-lis in the M.359 medallion) indicates that the character was firmly intended to represent a king of France; in the Totentanz tradition his counterpart would have been the German king or king of Rome, i.e. heir to the emperor, albeit not in Knoblochtzer’s woodcut where

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he carries instead a fleur-de-lis banner.115 The king in the Dance of Death mural at Stratford also appears to have worn a mantle decorated with the English royal device of three lions passant gardant (see chapter 3, fig. 11).116 However, the differences in hairstyle and beard suggest a later updating in Marchant’s woodcut, and the possibility of another cryptoportrait in the mural at Les Innocents if we can rely on the Rothschild 2535 figure having been modelled on its counterpart there. Portraiture and likeness had become an important political tool under Charles V. Akin to the gravenreeksen in Flanders and Holland was a series of portrait statues commissioned by Charles V for a monumental staircase (grande vis) at the Louvre, which included the king, his wife Jeanne de Bourbon, his three brothers (the dukes of Anjou, Berry and Burgundy) and uncle (Philip, duke of Orléans), and two sergeantsat-arms; two extant contemporary figures of the king and queen (Louvre) are quite individual in appearance.117 Unlike his father, Charles VI had very regular features that make him more difficult to recognise in depictions.118 The king’s funeral effigy has failed to survive, but the figure in ms. Rothschild 2535 shows very individual traits and as such resembles the royal tomb effigy at Saint-Denis (Fig. 16), which is believed to have been based on a death mask, just as the funeral effigy is likely to have been.119 Two later parallels are the putative cryptoportraits of Francis I (14941547) in Holbein’s woodcut (Fig. 17) and the figure of the king in the sixteenthcentury mural at La Ferté-Loupière, which was based on one of Marchant’s later editions but updated presumably to resemble the reigning monarch (Fig. 18).120 16. (Left) Tomb effigy of Charles VI by Pierre de Thoiry, commissioned c.1423-24 for the king’s monument at the royal abbey of Saint-Denis.

17. (Above, middle) Death and the king (cryptoportrait of Francis I?), from Holbein’s danse macabre woodcut series published in 1538: the cloth of honour behind the king appears to feature fleurs-de-lis.

18. (Above, right) Updated figure of the king (cryptoportrait of Francis I?) in the sixteenth-century danse macabre mural at La Ferté-Loupière (Yonne).

The stanzas for the king in the French poem support the above hypothesis, albeit not so much the description of him by the mort as ‘Renomme de force et de proesse’, which would hardly have suited Charles VI, even if he had formerly been engaged in military activity – he was on campaign against the duke of Brittany in 1392 when struck down by his first attack of madness. At first sight, the king’s bitter response to the mort’s invitation appears to be a rare reference to the musical aspect of the Danse, ‘Je nay point apris a danser / A danse et note si sauuage’, which is echoed by Lydgate as ‘I haue not lerned here-a-forne to daunce / No daunce in sothe of fotynge so

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sauage’ (E:113-14). These lines have traditionally been interpreted as a sign that while there is equality in death, musical tastes differed radically amongst the different ranks of society, with Death often playing lowly instruments (see Introduction).121 On the other hand, it may be an allusion to the bal des sauvages (or bal des ardents, as it became known) of 28 January 1393, a notorious near-fatal incident that had caused outrage in Paris where the king enjoyed great popularity (he was known as ‘le Bienaimé, before his illness caused this soubriquet to be changed into ‘le Fol’). The bal des sauvages was described in vivid detail by Jean Froissart (c.1337c.1405) in his Chroniques, several extant early copies of which contain illustrations of the scene.122 Shortly after his recovery from his first bout of madness, the king and five of his courtiers decided to dress up as wildmen (hommes sauvages) as a prank to liven up the wedding of one of the queen’s maids of honour on 28 January 1393: they wore highly combustible linen costumes soaked in pitch or wax and covered with frazzled hemp.123 These costumes accidentally ignited when Louis of Orléans and his friend Philippe de Bar entered with torches, causing the agonising death of four of the dancers and nearly killing the king himself. To assuage Parisian anger, Louis had to do public penance; he also erected a chapel at Les Célestins in expiation. Visitors to the cemetery may well have grasped the reference to the bal des sauvages in the Danse at Les Innocents, all the more so since the incident was still cited years later among Louis’s misdeeds in the Justification du duc de Bourgogne, a manifesto designed to defend his assassination as justified tyrannicide.124 Moreover, the king’s stanza ends with the telling conclusion that the greater and lesser alike will be turned to mere ashes: ‘En la fin fault deuenir cendre’. Of course, this aphorism is also an apt reference to the phrase ‘Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes’ from the burial service, and the ambiguity is no doubt deliberate. It is impossible to know if Lydgate recognised any hint to the event of 1393 when he translated the last line as ‘For [w]e shalle al to dede asshes turne’ (E:120); he may have been more mindful of the late King Henry V as the ‘som-tyme crowned kynge’ (E:638). The combined evidence of heraldry, likeness and textual allusions all point to the king in the Danse at Les Innocents having been intended as a cryptoportrait of Charles VI. This idea is reinforced by the appearance of the roy mort at the end of the poem, who complements the earlier, still living king in a way similar to the occurrence of dual effigies on ‘double-decker’ tombs (see chapter 7). Further support for this idea may be found in the remains the cadaver tomb of Cardinal Jean de La Grange (d. 1402) in Avignon, which formerly incorporated figures of the cardinal’s former patrons Pope Clement VII and King Charles V, the latter’s sons Charles VI and Louis of Orléans, and the cardinal himself, each kneeling in a separate register before a scene from the Five Joys of Mary.125 If the hierarchical arrangement of these five figures and the inclusion of seven putrefying heads of further dignitaries above the transi at the bottom are indeed references to the danse macabre, this would lend further support to both an earlier dissemination of the danse prior to the mural in Paris and to the hypothesis of cryptoportraiture in such a context. If the hypothesis about a cryptoportrait of Charles VI at Les Innocents is correct, it also means either that the Danse Macabre poem was written after 1393, or more likely – particularly in view of Jehan Le Fèvre’s mention of the danse in 1376 – that it was specially adapted from an earlier (lost) version to include references to the bal des sauvages. ƔThe constable Despite everything that has been written about social stereotypes, it would be wrong to think that the Danse presents a straightforward if satirical picture of medieval social

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hierarchy. Just as there had not been a single pope during the Great Schism until 1417, there was no single constable of France when the mural at Les Innocents was painted. The rank of comes stabulari was originally established in 1060; first officer of the crown and commander-in-chief of the army, the constable was one of the original five great officers of the crown.126 The badge of office was the elaborate royal sword ‘Joyeuse’, dating from the 1300s, which was carried by the constable in front of the king in coronation ceremonies; its scabbard was embellished with fleurs-de-lis. The connetable was a key national figure, but recent holders of the post had met a violent end: two successive constables were killed at Agincourt while a third – Bernard, count of Armagnac – had been murdered in Paris in 1418 when the city was seized by the Burgundians.127 After Bernard’s murder, Queen Isabeau appointed as the new constable of France Charles II, duke of Lorraine, who held the post from 1418 until his resignation in 1425;128 thereafter, the English government continued to appoint its own constables. Meanwhile, however, the dauphin in his ‘kingdom of Bourges’ had also been appointing his own constables: first in 1421 the Scot John Stuart, earl of Buchan, who died in 1424 at the Battle of Verneuil against Bedford’s army, and then in 1425 Arthur, comte de Richemont and brother to John V, duke of Brittany. Originally an Armagnac supporter, Richemont was a rather controversial character who in 1424 turned sides from Bedford to the dauphin despite having been given another of Philip the Good’s sisters for his wife in 1423; yet his service to the dauphin’s cause was questionable and the Bourgeois claimed that ‘the English used to say that they feared neither war nor defeat so long as he was constable of France’.129 The text of the French Danse contains no clear pointers to any identifiable constable of the period. There are conventional warnings about the uselessness of weapons and valour since Death will take even ‘Les plus fors comme charlemaigne’ (l. 3) – perhaps not just an ubi sunt reference but also an allusion to the earlier figure of the emperor whose heraldry may have been that of Charlemagne (see above). In response, the constable’s words convey a mixture of justification and brute force. A cryptoportrait in the original mural could have offered clues to the identity of an actual constable, but such evidence is no longer available. The constable in Marchant’s woodcut is visually one of the most impressive figures in the whole series as he fills the arched space vertically, his ceremonial sword raised aloft, but his armour is of much later date than the mural as a comparison with his counterpart in Morgan MS M.359 shows (Fig. 8). Whatever the image of the constable at Les Innocents may have looked like, contemporaries would have known that France no longer had one constable, but two. ƔThe missing link: the duke Despite the careful hierarchical order of the French Danse, at least in the first half of the poem, a comparison with other schemes reveals a conspicuous omission: whereas the clerical rank includes the anachronistic figure of the patriarch (to be discussed below), the line of lay characters jumps from king via constable to chevalier or knight, missing out the duke (see table below). The omission of the duke has so far failed to attract the attention of scholars, yet it is illogical and unlikely to be coincidence in view of the carefully planned hierarchy of the Danse.130 The inclusion of both a duke and a count in the Latin-German Totentanz makes much better sense, while the Spanish Dança at least has el duque. That the duke would normally have been part of such an hierarchical scheme is also evident from his inclusion in the Morgan MS M.359 cycle (see Appendix 7 and Fig. 19), where he is placed before the constable on fol. 127r, as in the Spanish Dança. His

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court dress with its ermine collar is the sign of his rank; he carries no other attributes. Even Knoblochtzer’s Totentanz version includes the duke although that can be explained by a look at Marchant’s 1486 edition, which features the duc as one of the ten added characters (Fig. 20): he is inserted before the patriarch and in turn preceded by another new figure, the papal legate, so that the alternation of clerical and lay representatives is maintained. Table. Sequence of the first twelve characters in the danse macabre. INNOCENTS, PARIS

LYDGATE (A version)

DANÇA GENERAL DE LA MUERTE

Latin-German TOTENTANZ

1. Pope 2. Emperor 3. Cardinal 4. King 5. Patriarch 6. Constable 7. Archbishop 8. Knight 9. Bishop 10. Squire 11. Abbot 12. Bailiff

1. Pope 2. Emperor 3. Cardinal 4. King 5. Patriarch 6. Constable 7. Archbishop 8. Baron 9. Lady 10. Bishop 11. Squire 12. Abbot

1. Pope 2. Emperor 3. Cardinal 4. King 5. Patriarch 6. Duke 7. Archbishop 8. Constable 9. Bishop 10. Knight 11. Abbot 12. Squire

1. Pope 2. Emperor 3. Empress 4. King 5. Cardinal 6. Patriarch 7. Archbishop 8. Duke 9. Bishop 10. Count 11. Abbot 12. Knight

19. The duke in a danse macabre medallion in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430-35 (New York, Morgan Library, MS M.359, fol. 126r).

20. The papal legate (left) and the duke (right), additional woodcut in Guy Marchant’s new expanded Danse Macabre edition published in Paris on 7 July 1486.

If we accept the hypothesis that the duke was included in an earlier prototype of the Danse but omitted from the mural at Les Innocents, there remains the question whether Marchant simply adopted two stanzas already known and available, or whether the additional stanzas for all ten new characters were commissioned specially. We know that the theme was adaptable and that new stanzas were added to the different Totentanz variants as well as to Lydgate’s Dance of Death (see chapter 3). In the 1486 edition the ‘tresnoble’ duke is praised by the mort for his prowess and nobility, but then reminded that ‘Les grans souuent sont premier pris’ (the great are

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often taken first).131 This concluding sentence matches the duke’s sentiment that ‘Hault estat nest pas le plus seur’ (high estate is not the most secure) and he is rightly fearful because ‘De mort suis assailliz tresfort: / Et ne say tour pour me deffendre’ (I am very fiercely attacked by death and know no trick by which to defend myself). The likelihood is that Marchant’s stanzas for the duke were newly written together with those for the other added characters in the 1486 edition; any stanzas from an earlier Danse version would by then probably have been lost or forgotten. However, in the 1420s such stanzas for the duke would have reminded readers of the two dukes assassinated in 1407 and 1419 without much chance of defending themselves. The exclusion of the duke from the Danse at Les Innocents was undoubtedly prompted by the political circumstances of the time: not just the earlier murders of Louis of Orléans in 1407 and John the Fearless in 1419, or the capture at Agincourt of Louis’s son Charles (whose subsequent imprisonment in England was to last until 1440), but more importantly the political stand-off between the Regent Bedford and Duke Philip the Good, allies though they might have been – the former de facto ruling Paris, but the latter enjoying great popularity there.132 Whereas the pope and the emperor were sufficiently far away and Charles VI was dead (and thus in no position to allow or disallow a cryptoportrait of himself in the mural at Les Innocents), there were several interested parties who might have been sensitive about any representation of a duke in such a public scheme. Lydgate may have had similar reasons for not adding the duke to his Dance of Death, such as the power struggle between Cardinal Beaufort and the duke of Gloucester, although the subsequent reattribution of the chevalier’s stanzas to the baron (‘Erl or Baron’ in the Lansdowne version) and the escuier’s to the ‘Knyht or scwyer’ (Lansdowne) may have made the omission less obvious (see Appendix 2 and chapter 3). In the mural at Les Innocents, however, the original scheme must have been adapted – probably at the unknown patron’s insistence – with the intention of removing any political embarrassment, unless the duke was meant to be conspicuous by his very absence. There is a grim irony in the fact that at least one dead duke was to be remembered in another Danse Macabre-inspired wall-painting in Paris: the image of Louis of Orléans being attacked by Death was commissioned by his grandson King Louis XII (1462-1515) for the family chapel at the monastery of Les Célestins in Paris.133 An antiquarian drawing of the mural in the Gaignières collection (Fig. 1 and also chapter 8) shows the duke kneeling before Death who utters the conventional words ‘IVVENES AC SENES RAPIO’ (I kill young and old alike). ƔOther characters The characters discussed above constitute the strongest evidence for the presence of cryptoportraits and allusions to historical figures and events in the Danse at Les Innocents. Yet the mural may have contained other, more subtle references that contemporaries might have grasped, but that are much more difficult for later researchers to recognise.134 Any political connotations are more likely to be found among the upper ranks of the Danse, so a number of key figures will be discussed in this final section. The cardinal follows the pope as the second-highest ranking cleric and is easily recognisable by his characteristic red hat, to which the Latin Totentanz cleverly refers in a pun and which Lydgate’s cardinal also specifically mentions (‘Mi hatte of rede’, E-102).135 The image of the cardinal might have reminded some viewers of Beaufort, the powerful and suppremely rich bishop of Winchester, who owed his cardinal’s hat to pope Martin V in return for supporting his candidacy in 1417 and who on a number

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of occasions visited Paris with more pomp than even Bedford could muster.136 However, it is hard to find a likely French counterpart who could have been portrayed in the mural. Marchant’s woodcut shows the cardinal shrinking back and averting his gaze from his dead counterpart, a pose not dissimilar (but reversed) in ms. Rothschild 2535. The text offers only general reminders of how the cardinal has lived ‘haultement / et en honneur’, but also how such grand living makes one forget the inevitable end. In reply the cardinal pays a sad farewell to the rich trappings of his status, including his ‘Chapeau rouge chappe de pris’. Whereas the cardinal is a prominent church dignitary, the patriarch is rather an historical anomaly at this time, a relic of the crusading era. After the fall of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem no longer had an actual diocese, although the Church continued to appoint titular patriarchs of Jerusalem;137 there were other Latin patriarchates still, but it was really an empty title.138 As one author remarked, only the clergy can have known what this title signified exactly, and the patriarch’s inclusion makes the omission of the duke all the more remarkable.139 Yet the patriarch is present in the French Danse, in Lydgate’s Dance of Death, Morgan MS M.359, the Spanish Dança and various Totentanz variants (see Appendix 6 and table above). His attribute is his staff with its characteristic double cross, as shown in Marchant’s woodcut. He must have been a sufficiently familiar church dignitary to be included to augment the clerical ranks, even if it is doubtful that the patriarch in the Danse Macabre was modelled on any particular holder of that title. The text just contains one intriguing remark that might suggest otherwise: after mocking his ‘basse chiere’ (i.e. his fallen countenance, as indicated by the turn of the patriarch’s head in Marchant’s woodcut), the mort reminds the patriarch not only that another will inherit his staff but that he himself will not become ‘pape de romme’. Was there a particular patriarch at this time who was known for his papal ambitions? It was an elevation of which Beaufort may have entertained brief hopes when he attended the Council of Constance, but although he held numerous titles (including that of papal legate) he was never a patriarch, and no other candidates for this figure in the mural can be identified. In Marchant’s image of the archbishop with his metropolitan cross-staff, there is a close connection between illustration and text, which may may mean that the woodcut resembled the figure in the mural. The mort’s opening lines ‘Que vous tires la teste arriere / Archeuesque: tirez vous pres’ (how you draw back your head, archbishop; draw near!) match the posture of the figure in the woodcut. Yet does this pose convey hauteur or apprehension? In the text the mort asks him whether he does so perhaps out of fear of being struck by someone (‘Auez vous peur quon ne vous fiere’), but Lydgate instead has Death ask the archbishop ‘whi do 3e 3ow with-drawe / so frowardli as hit were bi disdeyne’ (E:152-53). The pose could be intentionally ambiguous (although the face suggests hauteur), with the mort opting for the wrong explanation to mock the prelate. Medieval archbishops were not usually timid; Jean Montaigu, archbishop of Sens, had even died fighting for France at Agincourt, but it would be hard to prove that the mural alluded to him. Curiously, in Rothschild ms. 2535 it is the bishop with a prominent crosier whose body language resembles the archbishop’s in Marchant’s woodcut (Fig. 21): perhaps a case of iconographical mixup? The painted figure has rather individual features, perhaps modelled on a cryptoportrait in the mural. The only other potential allusion is the archbishop’s frivolous regret that he will no longer be able to rest ‘en chambre painte’, i.e. in a painted bedchamber of the type that was once common in medieval palaces, as the Palais des Papes in Avignon still testifies.

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21-22. The bishop (far left) and the knight in a heraldic tabard (left), details of a danse macabre border decoration in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430 (Paris, BnF, ms. Rothschild 2535, fol. 109r).

The bishop in the Danse had many real-life counterparts, but the local prelate would have been a natural target for pointed satire. The position of the medieval bishop of Paris was complicated in that his diocese fell under the metropolitan jurisdiction of the archbishop of Sens, whereas he was elected by the cathedral chapter of Notre-Dame; his appointment then had to be confirmed by the king before he could be consecrated and officially installed in his cathedral, for which papal approval was required. In the turbulent first half of the fifteenth century this often did not happen, and the 1420s saw some candidates for the see elected but not confirmed, or in one case appointed but then rapidly transferred by the pope.140 Apart from the upset that this frequent change of bishops may have caused to the diocese at large, there was the power that a local bishop could wield over matters of church revenue. In 1441 Denis du Moulin (Charles VII’s candidate for the see of Paris in 1439) was to forbid all processions and burials in the parish church and cemetery of Les Innocents for four months after demanding more money in tithes than the impoverished parish could afford to pay, as the Bourgeois indignantly recorded.141 In 1424-25 this conflict was still in the future, but it is evident that relationships between the bishop and the churches in his diocese could be fraught, and tax was a major cause of resentment. It is telling, therefore, that the focus of the mort’s stanza is on the need to render account of one’s conduct (‘De vous subges fault rendre compte’). His words make the bishop realise that the world ultimately disinherits everyone; God will hold all to account, ‘Dieu vouldra de tout compte oir’ (l. 11), and only merit will serve, ‘Tout ce passe fors le merite’ (l. 16). The choice of this accounting jargon for the bishop may reflect parish resentment, while Death’s final line ‘Nest pas asseur que trop hault monte’ (he who mounts too high is not secure) could have been intended as a pointed reference to the uncertainties facing those in high positions at this time, bishops (elect) included. Yet as long as we do not know for certain who commissioned the mural, we cannot be sure whether there was a specific target for the satire in the bishop’s portrayal. The exclusion of the duke meant that the chevalier assumed a place in the dance hierarchically above his status. The non-military apparel of the knight in Marchant’s woodcut is almost certainly an updating and totally different from the heraldic tabard that the beardless and bareheaded figure in ms. Rothschild 2535 wears over his armour (Fig. 22). The Rothschild knight’s blazon (azure, a chevron between six martlets or) might suggest a cryptoportrait, if we accept that the illuminator based this figure on the mural, but the coat of arms cannot be positively identified.142 In the poem, the mort’s focus is the knight’s habit of dancing (presumably all night) with ‘Les dames’; he orders his victim to forget ‘trompettes clarons’ – the music of battle, hunting and action – and to follow him ‘sans sommellier’ (without snoozing) to a

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different dance. Vainly does the knight recall the esteem he has enjoyed, the love of the ladies, and how he was never defamed ‘A la court de seigneur notable’. It is a satirical, but rather stereotypical summary of knightly pleasures. Even so, the possibility of a cryptoportrait cannot be ruled out: as in the case of the emperor, it is possible that a fictitious coat of arms was used intentionally to disguise the identity of the real-life counterpart of the chevalier in the mural.

Conclusion Whereas the genesis of the danse macabre, the mural in Paris, the poem and its illustrations in Marchant’s edition have all been extensively studied, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the circumstances under which the wall-painting was created in 1424-25. As a result, the characters in the Danse have been regarded as social stereotypes: interesting for the information they may contain about medieval life, society and morality, but without further historical relevance. When the large and no doubt costly Danse Macabre mural came to be painted at Les Innocents, its didactic theme was already familiar: literary and visual warnings about death abounded in this period. The text of the poem was almost certainly adapted from an earlier (lost) version, as suggested not only by the stanza of the king but also by the addresses by the mort to the reader and to preceding characters in five stanzas; this latter feature – characteristic of the Spanish Dança – would originally have emphasised the idea of a continuing chain of living and dead dancers.143 What may have made the mural so famous so soon is the adaptation of a moralizing theme into a social satire on a monumental scale, but with political and historical connotations that contemporaries would have recognised. The (presumed) presence of cryptoportraits in the mural at Les Innocents is paralleled in earlier art – for example, there are good reasons to believe that the figure on Jeremiah on Claus Sluter’s Well of Moses at Champmol was a cryptoportrait of Philip the Bold144 – and in later danse macabre schemes elsewhere, which raises the question whether the latter were inspired by the celebrated example in Paris. Without knowing the identity of the patron it is difficult to establish the specific intention of the mural. (The identity of the artist is less important in this respect, as is that of the original author whose earlier version may have been superseded by the later adaptation of the text.) France was in chaos, and had been for quite some time, but with the death of the once popular Charles VI in 1422 the Parisians had lost their national sovereign; the Bourgeois has left a vivid account of their grief at the king’s death and dismay that his only royal mourner should be the duke of Bedford – a foreigner.145 At the time of the mural’s creation, their choice was between a foreign regency on behalf of an uncrowned boy king, the political manoeuvring of an ambitious Burgundian duke, and the as yet unproven claims of a dauphin who had been disowned by his parents and whose legitimacy was in doubt.146 It is, therefore, not impossible that in some way the mural was intended to serve as a nationalistic homage to the deceased Charles VI as the last king of a united France, whose tomb effigy was commissioned by his widow Isabeau (still resident in Paris until her death in 1435) around the same time. As long as the (overt) message was not politically controversial, the English authorities could not have objected to such a scheme: their king Henry VI was, after all, the grandson and heir of Charles VI. Likewise, Philip the Good was himself a Valois and the late king’s second cousin, as well as his son-in-law, having married in 1409 Charles VI’s daughter Michelle who had predeceased her father in June 1422.

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This brings us to the question of who the unknown patron may have been. Like his father and grandfather before him, Philip the Good knew the importance of art for political and propaganda purposes: for example, life-size figures of Philip the Bold and Margaret of Flanders were added to the painted gravenreeks in the Count Louis of Mâle’s intended funerary chapel at Courtrai in 1406, just as its design was copied for a similar series in the chapel at Ghent in 1419, the year of Philip the Good’s succession.147 Allusions in the Paris mural to the ‘bal des ardents’, which was still debated at the Council of Constance in 1415 as one of Louis of Orléans’ crimes, would have suited the Burgundian faction but not the Orléans-Armagnac supporters. Above all, Philip was keen not to associate himself too closely with the English regime but to steer a politically safe course; he carefully avoided attending the deaths of both Henry V and Charles VI, and also spent very little time in Paris during Bedford’s regency. Even so, the year in which the painting was commenced saw not one but three rare visits by Philip to Paris, viz. 10-23 February, 12 June-5 July and 20 October-24 November 1424.148 The mural was situated not far from Philip’s hôtel in Paris in an area that one historian described as Burgundian territory in view of the small number of confiscated Armagnac properties in the triangle between the rue Saint-Denis and the rue SaintHonoré.149 Moreover, Philip’s libraire Guillebert de Metz specifically named the mural in his Description de Paris. Intriguing is also a record of the numerous snow sculptures that were set up around Arras during the severe winter of 1434-35.150 Joan of Arc had been held captive in Arras in November 1430; the city belonged to the duke of Burgundy who would sign a treaty there with the former dauphin in late 1435. Amongst the named snow sculptures at Arras that winter were ‘le Grande Puchelle’ with ‘gens d’armes’ (often explained as Joan the Maid with armed men, although the interpretation of ‘Grande Puchelle’ is debatable) and ‘la dansse machabre où estoient en figure de nege l’Empereur, le Roy, le Mort et Manouvrier’ (the danse macabre in which there were snow figures of the emperor, the king, Death and worker).151 Whether or not the Arras danse in snow carried a political message, it indicates a surprisingly rapid dissemination into popular culture within a Burgundian-controlled area as well as a change in politics: as mentioned earlier, Philip owned an early manuscript copy that contained the Danse Macabre text (BnF, ms.fr. 14989) alongside an anti-dauphinist poem. His interest in the theme is also suggested by a ‘jeu, histoire et moralité sur le fait de la danse macabre’ that was performed for the duke in his hôtel in Bruges in September 1449.152 Coupled with the fact that the duke was a maecenas with the means to pay for an expensive mural, there may be enough circumstantial but suggestive evidence to propose Duke Philip the Good as the unknown patron of the mural at Les Innocents, although further research of the ducal records is needed to prove this hypothesis – if any such written evidence remains. Whoever the patron may have been, a painted memorial to his royal father cannot have displeased Charles VII when he finally re-entered Paris in 1436 with Burgundian support. By that time, the fame of the mural and the theme of the Danse Macabre had already spread across Europe to be adapted yet further to what local patrons on either side of the Channel wanted it to be: a moralising text or a decorative border in manuscript or print, a mural, a window, sculpture, or whatever suited their tastes and purposes. The irony is that these later adaptations may have obscured the original intention of the mural and its patron. --oo0oo--

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NOTES 1

F. Warren (ed.), with introduction and notes by B. White, The Dance of Death, edited from MSS. Ellesmere 26/A.13 and B.M. Lansdowne 699, collated with the other extant MSS., EETS, o.s. 181 (London, 1931, repr. 2000), ‘Verba translatoris’, l. 20 in the Ellesmere MS. Further quotations in the text will be based on this edition, with E referring to the Ellesmere and L to the Lansdowne manuscript versions. 2 Since this chapter was written, its key findings have been published in S. Oosterwijk, ‘Of Dead Kings, Dukes and Constables: The Historical Context of the Danse Macabre in Late Medieval Paris’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 161 (2008), pp. 131-62. 3 For the historical background, see G.Ll. Thompson, Paris and its People under English Rule: The Anglo-Burgundian Regime 1420-1436 (Oxford, 1991), and W. Paravicini and B. Schnerb (eds), Paris, capitale des ducs de Bourgogne, Beihefte der Francia, 64 (Ostfildern, 2007). Also C.T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy 1415-1450: The History of a Medieval Occupation (Oxford, 1983); C. Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c.1300-c.1450 (Cambridge, 1988); C. Allmand (ed.), Power, Culture, and Religion in France c.1350-c.1550 (Woodbridge, 1989); C. Allmand (ed.), War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France (Liverpool, 2000). For Bedford, see J. Stratford (ed.), The Bedford Inventories: The Worldly Goods of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France (1389-1435) (London, 1993)., and for a lively, if not always accurate account of his life and career, E. C. Williams, My Lord of Bedford 1389-1435, Being a Life of John of Lancaster, first duke of Bedford, brother of Henry V and Regent of France (London 1963). 4 Paris had inevitably been the main scene of conflict between these rival factions, who controlled the capital at different intervals. The city had been seized in 1418 by the Burgundians, taking advantage of the distractions caused to the Valois-Armagnac government by the English military campaign in Normandy; a massacre of their Armagnac opponents was carried out during May and June. As pointed out by Thompson, Paris and its People, p. 10, most exiles from Paris had fled because of the Burgundians seizing the city in 1418, not because of the arrival of the English in 1420. 5 Biographical details throughout have been checked in H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Henry Beaufort was the illegitimate son of Henry VI’s great-grandfather John of Gaunt and his then mistress (and subsequently third wife) Katherine Swynford; the Beaufort children were later officially legitimised by papal bull and by Richard II. 6 B.G.H. Ditcham, ‘“Mutton Guzzlers and Wine Bags”: Foreign Soldiers and Native Reactions in Fifteenth-Century France’, in Allmand, Power, Culture and Religion, pp. 1-13. 7 These two events were retrospectively illustrated in the famous Pageant of the Birth, Life and Death of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (BL, Cotton MS Julius E. iv, art. 6, fols 23v-24r); see the facsimile edition by A. Sinclair (ed.), The Beauchamp Pageant (Donington, 2003). 8 Thompson, Paris and its People, pp. 13-15, notes how Philip carefully avoided being in Paris at the deaths of Henry V and Charles VI; he also failed to attend the coronation of Henry VI at Paris in 1431, as noted in Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, p. 39. See also H. vander Linden, Itinéraires de Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne (1419-1467) et de Charles, comte de Charolais (1433-1467) (Brussels, 1940). However, both John and Philip enjoyed great popular support in Paris and more than one historian has assumed that Philip was actually thwarted by Bedford taking on the regency; see, for example, N. Pons, ‘Intellectual Patterns and Affective Reactions in Defence of the Dauphin Charles, 1419-1422’, in Allmand, War, Government and Power, pp. 54-69, at p. 55. R. Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (1970, repr. Woodbridge, 2002), p. 16-17, notes that Philip allowed Bedford to take the title of regent as he himself ‘had never been seriously interested in French affairs’; his military efforts also dwindled once French revenues passed to the English administration in Paris, although he did offer military support on request and in return for full payment. 9 Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, pp. 105-20, esp. p. 107. 10 Thompson, Paris and its People, pp. 8-10. 11 The church and cemetery are extensively discussed and illustrated in M. Fleury and G.-M. Leproux (eds), Les Saints-Innocents (Paris, 1990), with thanks to Didier Jugan for finding me a copy of this book. There is also a discussion of the cemetery in V. Harding, The Dead and Living in Paris and London, 1500-1600 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 101-13. The ‘Tour Jean sans Peur’ still exists, situated to the north of where the cemetery used to be. See also Paravicini and Schnerb, Paris. 12 The reasons for the dedication of the church to the Holy Innocents are unclear but under Philippe Auguste’s reign the body of a young ‘martyr’ – a boy named Richard who was said to have been crucified by Jews in Pontoise c.1179 – was brought to the cemetery for burial; some medieval texts refer to the church as ‘Saint-Innocent’. See G.-M. Leproux, ‘Le cimetière médiéval’, in Fleury and Leproux, Les Saints-Innocents, pp. 37-53, at p. 38, with reference to Rigord’s Gesta Philippi Augusti.

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An alabaster cadaver statue of c.1530 from the cemetery (now in the Louvre) is also known as La Mort Saint-Innocent. 13 For an entertaining survey of Christian burial in the Middle Ages, see R.C. Finucane, ‘Sacred Corpse, Profane Carrion: Social Ideals and Death Rituals in the later Middle Ages’, in J. Whaley (ed.), Mirrors of Mortality. Studies in the Social History of Death (London, 1981), pp. 40-60. 14 Leproux, ‘Le cimetière médiéval’, pp. 39, 41. 15 B. de Andia, ‘Triomphe de la vie sur la mort’, in Fleury and Leproux, Les Saints-Innocents, pp. 1224, at p. 15. Leproux, ‘Le cimetière médiéval’, pp. 50-51, recounts how on 11 October 1442 one Jeanne la Verrière was ceremoniously walled up by Bishop Du Moulin in a newly constructed cell in the proximity of Alix la Bourgotte, who died in 1470 after having been a devout anchoress for forty-six years; Alix might thus have witnessed the mural in the cemetery being painted. An involuntary anchoress was Renée de Vendômois, who in 1486 had her death sentence for the murder of her husband commuted by parliament into perpetual detention in a purpose-built cell at Les Innocents. 16 An evocative description of the cemetery is given in J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (1919, transl. 1924, repr. Harmondsworth, 1982), esp. pp. 143-44. 17 A smaller version of such a medieval cemetery arrangement survives in the Aître Saint-Maclou in the heart of Rouen, which originally dates back to the thirteenth century but which was reconstructed probably in the later 1520s after a recurrence of the plague in 1521-22. It features a sculpted danse macabre cycle on the pillars supporting the charnel-houses it its upper galleries (since converted). See P. Levasseur, ‘Observations sur l’iconographie de l’Aître Saint-Maclou: une synthèse de l’art macabre et des apports de la renaissance’, in Actes du 11e Congrès International d’études sur les Danses macabres et l’art macabre en général (Meslay-le-Grenet, 2003), pp. 39-56; B. Venot and J.P. Mouilleseaux, L’Aître Saint-Maclou de Rouen: petit guide à l’usage des habitués du lieu et de ceux qui le découvrent (Rouen, 1980), which illustrates all danse macabre pairs on pp. 35 and 45. 18 For a discussion of funeral and burial scenes in late-medieval manuscripts, especially illustrating the Office of the Dead in fifteenth-century books of hours, see G.K. Fiero, ‘Death Ritual in FifteenthCentury Manuscript Illumination’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), pp. 271-94; compare also other burial scenes with charnel-houses visible in the background in figs 4 (New York, Morgan Library, MS 453, fol. 133v) and 8 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Astor A. 16, fol. 178r). The suggestion in G.T. Clark, The Spitz Master. A Parisian Book of Hours (Los Angeles, 2005), pp. 48-52, that the burial scene on fol. 194 of the Spitz Hours may depict the cemetery of Les Innocents and thus provide evidence about the mural, is based on a misunderstanding of the mural’s actual location. 19 Leproux, ‘Le cimetière médiéval’, p. 44 and fig. 27. 20 For example, G. Kaiser (ed.), Der tanzende Tod. Mittelalterliche Totentänze (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), p. 71, claims it happened as early as 1529. Instead, B. and H. Utzinger, Itinéraires des danses macabres (n.pl., 1996), p. 83, and J.M. Clark, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Glasgow, 1950), p. 24, state that the mural was lost in 1669 when the charnel-houses on the south side were demolished in order to widen the rue de la Ferronnerie, which R. Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes: die mittelalterlichen Totentänze und ihr Nachleben (Bern/Munich, 1980), p. 167, claims to have happened in 1634. I. le Masne de Chermont, ‘La danse macabre du cimetière des Innocents’, in Fleury and Leproux, Les Saints-Innocents, pp. 84-109, at p. 101, confirms 1669 as the date. That was in any case too late for King Henri IV, who was assassinated on 14 May 1610 when his open coach was held up by traffic in the narrow rue de la Ferronnerie. H. Couzy, ‘L’Église des SaintsInnocents à Paris’, Bulletin Monumental, 130, IV (1972), pp. 279-302, provides a detailed description of the church and its demolition in 1787. 21 Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 167-68 and pl. 1; Utzinger and Utzinger, Itinéraires, pp. 82-83 with enlarged details of the Carnavalet painting that show a mural with figures and a text band below. 22 Transl.: Here begins the ‘Dance macabee’, which carries on for ten arcades in each of which there are six octaves, of which the first one hereafter – the four last arcades have eight. The use of the word arcades may be ambiguous: it is not clear whether the author meant ten bays, which is more likely, or ten arches separating eleven bays. Some maps indicate eleven bays for the mural (see Fig. 4). J.C. le Bot, ‘L’art macabre médiéval à Paris’, in Actes du 11e congrès international d’études sur les Danses macabres et l’art macabre en général (Meslay-le-Grenet, 2003), pp. 277-92, at p. 279, without source reference; the text in BnF, fonds Clairembault, ms. fr. 8220 is also mentioned by abbé Valentin Dufour in his 1873 Recherches sur la dance macabre peinte en 1425 au cimetière des Innocents, as confirmed to me by Didier Jugan. In the later printed edition of the Danse by Guy Marchant, and in manuscript copies of the poem, each character (i.e. le mort and the living) has a single huitain or octave: besides the thirty pairs, there are the acteur at the start with two such stanzas, the beggar accompanying the

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usurer and the additional dead dancer after the hermit with one stanza each, one stanza for the dead king and finally two more for the acteur, totalling an uneven number of 67 octaves. Either the account in the ‘Epitaphier’ manuscript is wrong, or there is one stanza unaccounted for. The spelling ‘macabee’ is one of several variants which one finds in medieval references to the theme. 23 See C. Beaune (ed.), Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris (Paris, 1990), introduction. The Bourgeois probably stated his identity and intentions in a prologue, which has not survived. 24 Transl.: Item, in the year 1424 the Danse Macabre was made at the Innocents, and it was begun around the month of August and finished the following Lent. A. Tuetey (ed.), Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, 1405-1449, publié d’après les manuscrits de Rome et de Paris (Paris, 1881), p. 203. Tuetey , n. 2, adds that only the manuscript version in Rome (Vatican, Reg. Lat. 1923, second half of the fifteenth century) mentions that the painting was started in August 1424; the Paris manuscript only gives the year 1425. In 1425 Easter fell on 8 April. 25 See, for example, C. Grössinger, The World Upside-Down: English Misericords (London, 1997), chapter 8, ‘Preaching’. 26 For example, the discussion of Franciscan iconography in Mallorca, Gerona and Morella in F. Massip and L. Kovács, ‘Les Franciscains et le genre macabre: les Danses de la Mort et la prédication’, European Medieval Drama, 8 (2004), pp. 91-105, or the claim in Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 157, that the Franciscan preacher at the start of the Totentanz mural in the Marienkirche in Berlin and the division into two separate rows of religious and lay characters are typically Franciscan elements. 27 E. Mâle, Religious Art in France. The Late Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Iconography and its Sources, Bollingen Series, 90:3 (1908, 5th edn 1949, transl. Princeton, 1986), pp. 330-31, with a reference to the documented Danse Macabre performance in the church of Saint-Jean in Besançon in 1453 that he suggested ‘was perhaps still accompanied by a sermon’. Worth mentioning here is also the hypothesis in H. Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche Totentanz: Entstehung - Enwicklung - Bedeutung (1954, revised edn Cologne/Graz, 1968), esp. pp. 56-78, that the original Latin Totentanz poem (to be discussed below) can be attributed to a German Dominican around 1350, with the German translation originating in the Würzburg area soon after; a claim that cannot be proved and that has since been dismissed by most scholars. 28 Transl.: And some eight days later a Franciscan named Brother Richard came to Paris, a man of great judgement, wise in prayer, a sower of good doctrine for the edification of his neighbours. And he worked so assiduously that it was hard to believe for anyone who had not seen it; for while he was in Paris there was only one day on which he did not preach. And he started on Saturday 16 April 1429 at Ste Geneviève; and the following Sunday and next week, i.e. the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, at the Innocents. And he would commence his sermon around 5 a.m., and he would continue until between 10 and 11 a.m., and there would always be some five or six thousand people for his sermon. And while preaching he would be standing on a high platform which was nearly one and a half toises high, with his back turned towards the charnel-houses opposite the Charronnerie, near where the Danse Macabre was located. Tuetey, Journal, pp. 233-34. As explained by Tuetey (n. 3), the name ‘Charronnerie’ referred to that part of the rue de la Ferronnerie that ran along the Innocents’ charnel-houses (charniers); the Paris manuscript actually reads ‘encontre la Feronnerie, à l’androit de la Dance Machabée’ (n. 4). 29 Tuetey, Journal, p. 233, n. 2; J. Shirley (transl.), A Parisian Journal 1405-1449 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 234-35 and 238-39. 30 Transl.: There is a very large cemetery, enclosed by so-called charnel-houses where the bones of the dead are piled up. In this place are remarkable paintings of the Danse Macabre and other subjects, with inscriptions to incite the people to devotion. One part of the cemetery belongs to the church of the Innocents, the second part is for the great hospital, and the third part is for those churches in Paris that do not have a cemetery at all. Edited text published in [A.J.V.] Le Roux de Lincy and L.M. Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris, 1855, 2nd edn 1867), ‘Description de la ville de Paris sous Charles VI par Guillebert de Metz 1407-1434’, pp. 117-236, at pp. 192-93; quoted in part with slight variations in Le Masne de Chermont, ‘La danse macabre’, p. 88; Le Bot, ‘L’art macabre’, p. 278; and C. Reynolds, ‘“Les Angloys, de leur droicte nature, veullent touzjours guerreer”: Evidence for Painting in Paris and Normandy, c.1420-1450’, in Allmand, Power, Culture, and Religion, pp. 37-55, at p. 43. The sole extant manuscript of Guillebert de Metz’s Description is in the Royal Library in Brussels. Le Bot suggests that Guillebert visited Paris in 1424-25. Also Clark, Dance of Death, p. 23. 31 Transl.: And there a hunt was organised of a live deer, which was very pleasant to watch. Tuetey, Journal, pp. 275-76. Beaune, Journal, p. 306 (n. 233), points out that the stag was the emblem of Henry’s rival Charles VII.

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See, for example, K. Varty, ‘Villon’s Three Ballades du Temps Jadis and the Danse Macabre’, in D.A. Trotter (ed.), Littera et Sensus: Essays on Form and Meaning in Medieval French Literature Presented to John Fox (Exeter, 1989), pp. 73-93; I. Siciliano, François Villon et les thèmes poétiques du Moyen Age (Paris, 1967). 33 As quoted from Dom Jacques du Breul’s Théâtre des Antiquités, p. 835, in G.-M. Leproux, ‘L’église des Saints-Innocents’, in Fleury and Leproux, Les Saints-Innocents, pp. 74-83, at p. 80; Le Masne de Chermont, ‘La danse macabre’, p. 85, situates the sculpture on the exterior of the chapelle SaintMichel. It should be noted that although Guillebert de Metz also describes how ‘La sont engigneusement entailliés en pierre les images des trois vifz et [des] trois mors’, he does not mention the duke as the patron; see Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, pp. 192-93. The duke himself desired to be buried at Les Innocents, although probably in a more permanent tomb. 34 Leproux, ‘L’église des Saints-Innocents’, p. 81. 35 Basing himself on the abbé Valentin Dufour’s 1874 study La Dance macabre des SS. Innocents de Paris d’après l’édition de 1484, S. Cosacchi, Makabertanz. Der Totentanz in Kunst, Poesie und Brauchtum des Mittelalters (Meisenheim am Glan, 1965), pp. 698-700, claimed that the danse macabre mural at Les Innocents was commissioned by Berry from the painter Jehan II d’Orléans in memory of his murdered nephew Louis, Jehan II being a conveniently known member from a dynasty of painters active in Paris in the fourteenth century, although he would almost certainly have been too old for such a major commission in 1424. Cosacchi’s argument is linked to his attribution of the text to Jean Gerson, a known advocate of the widow and children of Louis of Orléans in their struggle to obtain justice for his murder. Even more anachronistic is the claim in 1597 by Noël du Fail in his Contes et discours d’Eutrapel about the ‘Dance Marcade’ that ‘ce savant et belliqueux roi, Charles le Quint [d. 1380], y fit peindre’ ; see Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens, p. 284. 36 Thompson, Paris and its People, p. 219. Because of Gerson’s open stance against the theologian Jean Petit’s defence of Louis of Orléans’ assassination as justifiable tyrannicide, John the Fearless had prevented his return to France from the Council of Constance in 1418, where the doctor christianissimus had played a major part in ending the Great Schism that had earlier seen three rival antipopes after the 1409 Council of Pisa. The Burgundian slaughter of Armagnac supporters in Paris in 1418 inspired Gerson to write a Deploratio in Latin. After John’s murder in 1419 Gerson ended his exile in Germany and settled in Lyons. 37 Some of the reasons for attributing the poem to Gerson are rather convoluted. On the one hand, a 1497 translation into Catalan by Pedro Miguel de Carbonell names as the author ‘un sanct homme doctor e Canciller de Paris [...] Johannes Climachus sive Climages’, presumably Nicolas de Clemanges who was a magister and Rector, rather than a doctor and Chancellor, and not named ‘Johannes’, but indeed a friend of Jean Gerson. On the other hand, and perhaps more tellingly, a copy of the poem survives in an early manuscript (BnF, ms.lat. 14904, from the rich library of the former abbey of SaintVictor in Paris) that also contains tractates by de Clemanges and especially Gerson. See Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 168; Clark, Dance of Death, pp. 28-29; E.P. Hammond (ed.), English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (1927, repr. New York, 1965), p. 426. Cosacchi, Makabertanz, p. 701, chose to see Gerson’s known opposition to the Burgundian cause as the reason why his authorship of the poem could not be revealed. 38 G. Hasenohr-Esnos (ed.), Le Respit de la Mort par Jean le Fevre, Société des Anciens Textes Français, (Paris 1969), p. 113, l. 3078. See also Rosenfeld, Mittelalterliche Totentanz, esp. pp. 118-35, and the objections to his highly speculative argument in, for example, Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 168, and Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, p. 72. Le Fèvre is credited with a ‘now lost danse macabré’ by W.E. Pfeffer in W.W. Kibler and G.A. Zinn (eds), Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (New York/London, 1995), p. 535. 39 As Appendices 3 and 5 show, there is a strict adherence in the danse to the alternating order of clerical and lay characters, which may be based on the logic of an earlier prototype; however, for this sequence to work, academically trained figures such as the maistre, the medecin, the advocat and the clerc must be counted as clerical; it is thus not strictly a division between religious and lay figures. 40 Rubric to stanza LXXXI in the Ellesmere MS. For Bnf, ms.fr. 14989, see H. Wijsman, ‘La Danse macabre du cimetière des Saints-Innocents et un manuscrit de Philippe le Bon’, in Actes du 12e congrès international d’études sur les Danses macabres et l’art macabre en général (Meslay-leGrenet, 2005), 1, pp. 135-44: at the start of this manuscript copy the label ‘Docteur loquitur’ is used. 41 Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 169. 42 Le Masne de Chermont, ‘La danse macabre’, p. 94. 43 Mâle, Religious Art, p. 332. 44 Le Masne de Chermont, ‘La danse macabre’, p. 94.

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Although the third implement is frequently described as an adze or pickaxe, it may instead be Death’s traditional emblem of the scythe as implied in the description in Jeremiah 9:21-22 (DouaiRheims translation of the Vulgate): ‘21 For death is come up through our windows, it is entered into our houses to destroy the children from without, the young men from the streets. 22 Speak: Thus saith the Lord: Even the carcass of man shall fall as dung upon the face of the country, and as grass behind the back of the mower, and there is none to gather it.’ There is the possibility of iconographical confusion on the part of the designer as the tool is held in two distinct ways: carried across the shoulder by the dead dancers fetching the emperor, the bishop and the monk, but used to lean upon by the dancer facing the curé. Adzes or mattocks can be observed amongst the objects relating to funeral and burial on the carved frieze of the medieval cemetery in Rouen. 46 Mâle, Religious Art, p. 333-34. 47 Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 169; La Danse Macabre de 1485, reproduite d’après l’exemplaire unique de la Bibliothèque de Grenoble et publiée sous l’égide de la Société des Bibliophiles Dauphinois (Grenoble, 1969). 48 Marchant’s edition is the version most frequently studied by scholars, rather than any manuscript copies closer in date to the mural. Hammond, English Verse, pp. 426-35, includes an edited version of an early manuscript copy of the French Danse Macabre poem (Lille, ms. 319) with an introduction; Warren, Dance of Death, Appendix I, pp. 79-96, instead chose to edit the version in BL, Add. MS 38858. Another edition based on the expanded 1486 version (with an English translation) is E.F. Chaney (ed.), La Danse Macabré des Charniers des Saints Innocents à Paris, Publications of the University of Manchester, 293 (Manchester, 1945). 49 See F. Whyte, The Dance of Death in Spain and Catalonia (Baltimore, 1931), and J. Saugnieux, Les danses macabres de France et d’Espagne et leurs prolongements littéraires (Lyons, 1972), with an edited version of the Dança general text on pp. 165-82; also L.P. Kurtz, The Dance of Death and the Macabre Spirit in European Literature, Publications of the Institute of French Studies, Inc. (New York, 1934), chapter 9, and Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 160-62. An expanded version of the Dança was printed in Seville in 1520, preceded in print in 1497 by a Catalan translation of the French Danse written by the royal archivist Pedro Miguel de Carbonell. 50 Transl.: See the pictures about this subject in the white codex about the commendation of souls, at the start. The second preacher’s address at the end is preceded by another Latin note, ‘Item alius doctor depictus predicando in opposita parte de contemptu mundi’ (Again, another teacher is depicted preaching on the opposite side about the contempt for the world); the last line of the Doctor’s Latin prologue likewise refers to visual imagery (Appendix 6). See Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 29-39 and 149; V. Leppin, ‘Der lateinische Totentanz aus Cpg 314 als Ursprungstext der europäischen Totentanztradition. Eine alte These neu bedacht’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 77:2 (1995), pp. 323-43. 51 See the introduction and facsimile of this ‘Oberdeutsche vierzeilige Totentanz’ in Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 276-329. This blockbook is usually dated 1465 but an earlier date of 1458-65 is proposed in P. Layet, ‘Die bimediale Münchner Totentanzhandschrift Xyl. 39’, in U. Wunderlich (ed.), L’art macabre, 1, Jahrbuch der Europäischen Totentanz-Vereinigung (Düsseldorf, 2000), pp. 80-96, at p. 95. 52 Layet, ‘Totentanzhandschrift’, offers a useful overview of OBD versions on pp. 94-96. For the mitteldeutsche variant (or mittelrheinische Totentanz), see R. Brand, ‘Die mitteldeutsche Totentanztradition. Ein Werkstattbericht’, in U. Wunderlich (ed.), L’art macabre, 3, Jahrbuch der Europäischen Totentanz-Vereinigung (Düsseldorf, 2002), pp. 21-36. Knoblochtzer’s Totentanz version was probably based on Marchant’s 1486 edition; see the facsimile editions in Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 108-93, and M. Lemmer (ed.), Der Heidelberger Totentanz von 1485 (Frankfurt am Main/Leipzig, 1991). Lemmer’s title shows how confusing the terminology (and dates) used for German Totentanz variants can be. In addition, there is the niederdeutsche tradition with at its centre the poem incorporated in the lost scheme of 1463 in the Marienkirche in Lübeck. 53 F. Egger, Basler Totentanz (Basel, 1990); Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 194-97; Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 183-88. 54 Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 160; Layet, ‘Totentanzhandschrift’, p. 89. 55 Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 184, suggests that the added figures of the Jew and the male and female pagan are derived from the Spanish Dança. 56 See, for example, B. Schulte, Die deutschsprachigen spätmittelalterlichen Totentänze. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Inkunabel ‘Des dodes dantz’. Lübeck 1489, Niederdeutsche Studien, 36 (Cologne, 1990), pp. 162-68, on Rosenfeld’s hypothesis about the ‘Würzburger Totentanz’. Although still regarded as a key study, Rosenfeld’s Mittelalterliche Totentanz has the power to confuse the unwary researcher; see Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, p. 276, n. 1, and also pp. 25, 27, 72. For the Spanish

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Dança, see Whyte, Dance of Death; Saugnieux, Danses macabres, esp. pp. 41-87, 165-82; also Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 160-62, and Schulte, Totentänze, pp. 153-57. 57 Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 168, cites three examples of which two (BnF, ms.lat. 14904 and ms.fr. 25550) originated in the abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris and a third (Lille, Bibl. publ., ms. 139) from the Dominican convent in Lille; Hammond, English Verse, pp. 426-27, lists in addition BnF, ms.fr. 25434 (from the Célestins, no date given), ms.fr. 1181, ms.fr. 1055, and two manuscript copies at Tours and in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, as well as the later BnF, ms.fr. 14989 and ms. fr. 995. The Danse Macabre des Femmes section of the richly illuminated ms. fr. 995, which is usually dated to the early sixteenth century, was published by A.T. Harrison (ed.), with a chapter by S.L. Hindman, The Danse Macabre of Women: Ms.fr. 995 of the Bibliothèque Nationale (Kent/London, 1994). 58 Transl.: As can be found at St Innocent. See Le Bot, ‘L’art macabre’, p. 280; also Hammond, English Verse, p. 426. This is another instance of the church being referred to not as Les Innocents, i.e. the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, but as dedicated to a single ‘St Innocent’; see n. 12 above. 59 Transl.: The words of the danse macabre, as found at [St] Innocent in Paris. Le Bot, ‘L’art macabre’, p. 280; Hammond, English Verse, p. 427. 60 Wijsman, ‘Danse macabre’. 61 Hammond, English Verse, pp. 427-35. Warren, Dance of Death, Appendix I, pp. 79-96. 62 According to Warren, Dance of Death, p. 90, BL Add. MS 38858 also has ‘Lomme qui emprunte’. 63 For example, Reynolds, ‘Les Angloys’, p. 49, notes the apparent disappearance around 1420 of the great Parisian workshop of the Boucicaut Master. See also F. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peinture en France 1440-1520 (Paris, 1993), pp. 18-19, 23; W. Voelkle, ‘Morgan M.359 and the Origin of the “New Iconography” of the Virtues in the Fifteenth Century’, in S.A. Stein and G.D. McKee (eds), Album Amicorum Kenneth C. Lindsay: Essays on Art and Literature (Binghamton, NY, 1990), pp. 57-90, at p. 69. 64 For example, the famous Bedford Hours (BL Add. MS 18850) was probably only adapted for the duke and duchess, and not originally commissioned by them: see Reynolds, ‘Les Angloys’, p. 51, and E.P. Spencer, ‘The Master of the Duke of Bedford: The Bedford Hours’, Burlington Magazine, 107 (1965), pp. 495-502. 65 Reynolds, ‘Les Angloys’, p. 53. 66 Reynolds, ‘Les Angloys’, p. 43, where no date is assigned to either manuscript. 67 C. de Hamel, The Rothschilds and their Collections of Illuminated Manuscripts (London, 2005), pp. 64-65 and fig. 30a, suggests the Bedford Master. G. Bartz and E. König, ‘Die Illustration des Totenoffiziums in Stundenbüchern’, in H. Beckeret et al., Im Angesicht des Todes. Ein interdisciplinäres Kompendium, 2 vols (St. Ottilien, 1987), 1, pp. 487-528, at p. 516 and fig. 4, attribute the manuscript instead to the Master of the Munich Légende Dorée (active in Paris between 1420-30 and 1450-60). 68 The image of Death preying on romantic couples was to become a theme in its own right, e.g. in the graphic work of the Housebook Master. See also this thesis, chapter 6, fig. 13. 69 The outfit of the man is also of around the same date. I am grateful to the dress historian Dr Margaret Scott for her information on medieval fashion. 70 Subjects for illustration of the Office of the Dead include the Last Judgement, the Vigil of the Dead, deathbed and burial scenes, Dives and Lazarus, Job on the dunghill, the Raising of Lazarus, and the Three Living and the Three Dead. See R.S. Wieck, ‘The Death Desired: Books of Hours and the Medieval Funeral’, in E.E. DuBruck and B.I. Gusick (eds), Death and Dying in the Middle Ages, Studies in the Humanities, 45 (New York/Canterbury, 1999), pp. 431-76, and also Fiero, ‘Death Ritual’. 71 The manuscript contains 174 vellum leaves and is richly decorated throughout with twelve large miniatures, 332 small border miniatures and twenty-four calendar illustrations; a wealth of illumination suggestive of an important patron. Its decorative programme is in many ways unusual: for this and other information on this manuscript, see Voelkle, ‘Morgan M.359’, and the Morgan Library’s CORSAIR website at http://utu.morganlibrary.org; also R.S. Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York, 1997), pp. 30, 55, nrs 14, 36. 72 Indicated in a sixteenth-century hand on fol. 173v: see Voelkle, ‘Morgan M.359’, p. 71. 73 Also included are St Botolph (translation 9 March, and 17 June), St Edward (18 March), St Augustine of Canterbury (27 May), and St Edmund of Canterbury (19 November), in addition to St Geneviève (3 January) and St Denis (9 October) for Paris. 74 The Trinitarian order was founded in the late twelfth century; its primary charitable duty was the ransoming of Christians held captive by the ‘Turks’, which in this post-Crusade era might have been somewhat less relevant although the fall of Constantinople to Sultan Mehmed and his muslim troops

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was not far off. The Alexian order was established around 1400; its mission was to bury the dead in the recurrent outbreaks of the plague. 75 See Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, fig. 256; Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 316, 326; L.P. Kurtz (ed.), Le Mors de la Pomme, Publications of the Institute of French Studies Inc. (New York, 1937), p. v and illustrations. Figures are also placed in either a landscape or a room in the miniatures in the so-called Kasseler Totentanz manuscript, whose text belongs to the mitteldeutsche variant; see Brand, ‘Mitteldeutsche Totentanztradition’, esp. pp. 22-26, and Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 198-206 and pls 266-91. Compare also the discussion of the central scene of the Danse Macabre misericord in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in chapter 6 of this thesis. 76 The Heidelberg blockbook may be as early as 1458, while the fragmentary Munich blockbook is dated c.1460-70 by Layet, ‘Totentanzhandschrift’ and c.1480 by Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 153. 77 There were publishing houses in other French towns such as Lyons, which has been associated with ‘popular printing’ in this period, but there is no record of any of them having produced a printed edition of the Danse prior to Marchant’s. See S.L. Hindman, ‘The Career of Guy Marchant (1483-1504): High Culture and Low Culture in Paris’, in S.L. Hindman (ed.), Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450-1520 (Ithaca/London, 1991), pp. 68-100, at p. 69 and n. 3. 78 For comparison, M. Tedeschi, ‘Publish and Perish: The Career of Lienhart Holle in Ulm’, in Hindman, Printing the Written Word, pp. 41-67, traces the brief period of activity of a printer whose business only lasted from Spring 1482 to late 1483, producing six expensive high-quality imprints before going bankrupt. 79 Thus, the ninety-six woodblocks depicting emperors, kings and popes were used 598 times, i.e. an average of six times each. See A. Wilson, assisted by J.L. Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976, repr. Amsterdam, 1978), p. 55. 80 For Marchant’s career, see Hindman, ‘The Career of Guy Marchant’. 81 Hindman, ‘The Career of Guy Marchant’, p. 70 and the preliminary list of Marchant imprints on pp. 93-100. 82 See P. Champion (ed.), La Danse Macabre, reproduction en fac-similé de l’édition de Guy Marchant Paris 1486 (Paris, 1925). 83 In her chapter 2 on the illustrations in Harrison, Danse Macabre of Women, p. 16, Sandra Hindman claimed that the six extra woodcuts depicted eleven new persons, thus bringing the total number of characters to forty-one. However, Marchant expanded the actual Danse Macabre scheme to forty characters by adding the following pairs, all with new woodcuts: le legat and le duc, le maistre descole and lomme darmes, le promoteur and le geolier, le pelerin and le bergier, le hallebardie and le sot, the latter with a different woodcut design showing trees in the background but no arched setting. Hindman may have failed to take into account the fact that Marchant renamed the ‘maistre’ ‘lastrologien’. The author of these additional verses is unknown. 84 In the early sixteenth century these additional ten male characters and the skeletal minstrels were included in the richly illuminated Danse Macabre manuscript BnF, ms. fr. 995 that also comprises a Danse Macabre des Femmes with thirty-six characters. As pointed out by Hindman, confusion has been caused by Hammerstein’s mistaken belief (based on nineteenth-century studies) that there was an earlier lost illuminated manuscript of c.1483 (Paris, BnF, ancien fonds Colbert No. 1849, ms. du roi, vélin no. 7310, i.e. the earlier shelfmark for ms. fr. 995), which thus would have preceded Marchant’s edition. See Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 177-78 and pls 64-65, 244, and Hindman in Harrison, Danse Macabre of Women, p. 15 and n. 1. 85 S. Oosterwijk, ‘“Alas, poor Yorick”: Death, the Fool, the Mirror and the Danse Macabre’, in S. Knöll (ed.), Narren – Masken – Karneval. Meisterwerke von Dürer bis Kubin aus der Düsseldorfer Graphiksammlung ‘Mensch und Tod’, exhibition catalogue (Regensburg, 2009), pp. 19-31 and 132-34 (catalogue entries). 86 See, for example, Hindman, ‘The Career of Guy Marchant’, p. 94, no. 10; Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 173-75, 181, and pls 49-53, 66, 245, 249. 87 Marchant’s Latin edition entitled Chorea ab eximio Macabro versibus alemanicis edita et a Petro Desrey trecacio quondam oratore nuper emendata was printed for Geoffrey de Marnef on 15 October 1490. See Hindman, ‘The Career of Guy Marchant’, preliminary list, pp. 93-100, nos 9, 10, 11, 27, 28, 35, 36; also Champion, Danse Macabre, ‘Notice’, p. 7. Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, pp. 181-83 and pls 24-25, discusses the two editions of 1528 and 1531 by Nicolas le Rouge in Troyes and the 1533 edition by Denis Janot in Paris. 88 Hindman, ‘The Career of Guy Marchant’, pp. 91-92 and n. 58.

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See Champion, Danse Macabre, fol. a.i, and the discussion in J.A. Wisman, ‘La symbolique du miroir dans les dances macabres de Guyot Marchant’, Romanische Forschungen, 103 (1991), pp. 15771. Lydgate likewise uses the image of a ‘myrrow[r]e’ (E:49). 90 Wijsman, ‘Danse macabre’, p. 141-42. 91 The French prose translation of Boccaccio’s text was Laurent de Premierfait’s Des Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, which in turn was to be translated by Lydgate as The Fall of Princes. Premierfait had been another victim of the Burgundian attacks on Armagnac supporters in Paris in 1418; see J. Laidlaw, ‘Alain Chartier and the Arts of Crisis Management’, in Allmand, War, Government and Power, 37-53, at 43. 92 See also F. Baron, ‘Le médecin, le prince, les prélats et la mort. L’apparition du transi dans la sculpture française du Moyen Age’, Cahiers Archéologiques, 51 (2006), pp. 125-58. A new article by Paul Binski, ‘John the Smith’s Grave’, in S. l’Engle and G.B. Guest (eds), Tributes to Jonathan J.G. Alexander : The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts, Art & Architecture (London, 2007), pp. 386-93, identifies an indent at Brightwell Baldwin (Oxfordshire) as potentially the earliest known shroud brass, dating to the 1370s. Touching upon the mural’s historical context, M. Dujakovic, ‘The Dance of Death, the Dance of Life: Cemetery of the Innocents and the Danse Macabre’, in L.U. Afonso and V. Serrão (eds), Out of the Stream: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Mural Painting (Newcastle, 2007), pp. 206-32, at 227-30, interprets the ‘roy mort’ as symbolic of the French nation. 93 Shirley, Journal, pp. 178-79. 94 Shirley, Journal, pp. 179-83. Charles had succeeded his father Charles V upon the latter’s death on 16 September 1380. 95 Tuetey, Journal, p. 179. Transl.: Item, it [i.e. the effigy] was a good six feet [‘une toise’] tall, lying on its back in a bed, the face – or the likeness of his [i.e. the king’s] face – uncovered, wearing a gold crown and holding in one of its hands a royal sceptre, and in the other a type of hand giving a blessing with two fingers, and these were gilded and so long that they reached the crown. Several such English royal funeral effigies survive at Westminster Abbey, including that of Charles VI’s daughter Catherine; see P. Lindley, ‘The Funeral and Tomb Effigies of Queen Katharine of Valois and King Henry V’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 160 (2007), pp. 165-77. 96 For example, N.Z. Davis, ‘Holbein’s Pictures of Death and the Reformation at Lyons’, Studies in the Renaissance, 3 (1956), pp. 97-130, at p. 99, claims that although the danse traditionally contained criticism of the clergy, ‘A few clerics are spared, such as the pope, “dieu en terre”, who must die like all humans but who is still entitled to the place of honor at the dance as “le plus digne seigneur”’. 97 K. Holderegger, ‘Der Tod und der Papst’, in Tanzend ins Jenseits. Vorstellungen – Darstellungen – Erfahrungen zu Sterben und Tod in Mittelalter und Gegenwart, publication accompanying an exhibition in Zurich, St Jakob am Stauffacher (Zurich, n.d.), pp. 10-11, at p. 11. Yet J. Tripps, ‘Den Würmer wirst Du Wildbret sein.’ Der Berner Totentanz des Niklaus Manuel Deutsch in den Aquarellkopien von Albrecht Kauw (1649), Schriften des Bernischen Historischen Museums, 6 (Berne, 2005), p. 32, describes Manuel’s lines as typical of the anti-clerical nature of the fifteenth-century Totentanz. 98 ‘Vff Erd scheÿn groß min Heÿligkeÿt / Die torrecht wällt sich vor mir neÿgt / Als ob ich vff schluß s Himmelrÿch. / So bin ich jetz selbs ouch ein Lÿch’. Tripps, Berner Totentanz, pp. 32-33. Each character in the mural scheme in Berne was accompanied by the coats of arms of an individual aristocratic patron who had paid for that particular scene, in this case Burckhard von Erlach (who had been in the service of Pope Julius II) and his wife Ursula von Seengen. 99 The corresponding German line in Heidelberg cpg 314 reads ‘Ich was ein heiliger pabst genant’, which matches the Heidelberg blockbook line; see Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 32, and Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, p. 280. 100 Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, p. 116. 101 Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, pp. 194-95; Clark, Dance of Death, p. 65. Felix V was Amadeus VIII, count and duke of Savoy until his abdication in 1440; he was elected antipope by the rebellious Council of Basel in 1439 as an alternative to Pope Eugenius IV, and only resigned under pressure ten years later. The interpretation of the figures in the Basel wall-painting is by the Basel-born artist Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593-1650), whose engravings of this Totentanz were published in 1621. 102 Tripps, Berner Totentanz, p. 32; M. Winzeler (ed.), Dresdner Totentanz: das Relief in der Dreikönigskirche Dresden (Halle an der Saale, 2001), pp. 4, 5, 13. For the emperor and pope (another portrait of Leo X?) in Holbein’s woodcuts, see Davis, ‘Holbein’s Pictures’, p. 101 and n. 47. 103 Sigismund had been de facto emperor since his (second) election as German King in 1419; no emperor had been officially crowned since his father Charles IV in 1355. See M. Kingzinger,

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‘Hausmachtpolitik oder internationale Politik? Die Diplomatie Sigismunds in Europa’, in M. Pauly and F. Reinert (eds), Sigismund von Luxembourg. Ein Kaiser in Europa (Mainz, 2006), pp. 35-42, at p. 35. 104 A. Bárány, ‘Anglo-Luxembourg Relations during the Reign of Emperor Sigismund’, in Pauly and Reinert, Sigismund von Luxembourg, pp. 43-59. 105 Sigismund had good reasons for wanting another crusade: his Hungarian lands were under threat from the Turks and Sigismund himself had only narrowly escaped the disastrous defeat of the French forces by the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I at Nicopolis in 1396, when many leading French nobles were either killed or captured, including the future duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless. See also J.M. Bak, ‘Sigismund and the Ottoman advance’, in Pauly and Reinert, Sigismund von Luxembourg, pp. 89-94. 106 Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, p. 7. 107 See V. Tátrai, ‘Die Darstellung Sigismunds von Luxemburg in der italienischen Kunst seiner Zeit’, in I. Takács (ed.), Sigismundus, Rex et Imperator. Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit Sigismunds von Luxembourg 1387-1437, exhibition catalogue (Mainz, 2006), pp. 143-67, and also U. Jenni, ‘Das Porträt Kaiser Sigismunds in Wien und seine Unterzeichnung. Bildnisse Kaiser Sigismunds als Aufträge der Reichsstädte’, in Pauly and Reinert, Sigismund von Luxembourg, pp. 285-300. The portrait’s former attribution to Pisanello is nowadays rejected. 108 See, for example, the seminal discussions of medieval portraiture in G.S. Wright, ‘The Reinvention of the Portrait Likeness in the Fourteenth Century’, Gesta, 39 (2000), pp. 117-34, and S. Perkinson, ‘From “Curious” to Canonical: Jehan Roy de France and the Origins of the French School’, Art Bulletin, 87 (2005), pp. 507-32. 109 Wim van Anrooij (ed.), De Haarlemse gravenportretten. Hollandse geschiedenis in woord en beeld, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen, 49 (Hilversum, 1997); S. Nash, ‘No equal in any land’. André Beauneveu: Artist to the Courts of France and Flanders (London, 2007), esp. pp. 26-27. The herald with a text scroll at the start and the figure of Death at the end of the extant Haarlem series, which is dated between 1486 and 1491, did not occur in an earlier mural that these panels replaced. 110 See the many examples discussed in V. Colling-Kerg, ‘L’iconographie de l’empereur Sigismond de Luxembourg en Italie (1368-1437)’, in Le rève italien de la maison de Luxembourg aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Luxemburg, 1995), pp. 189-227. Although one cannot help but suspect a tendency to interpret every bearded figure in fifteenth-century Italian art as potentially based on Sigismund, the idea has found wider support. See also G. Pochat, ‘Zur Genese des Porträts’, in Takács, Sigismundus, esp. cat. 2.1, pp. 124-42, at p. 141: ‘Kaum ein Herrscher der Zeit wurde so häufig in Handlungs- und Kryptoporträts dargestellt wie Sigismund’. 111 W. van Anrooij, Helden van weleer. De Negen Besten in de Nederlanden (1300-1700) (Amsterdam, 1997), p. 83-85, with mention of Matthew Paris’ use of the double-headed eagle in these colours for the imperial arms of Otto IV and Frederick II. According to Van Anrooij, these arms were used both for the Holy Roman Emperor, the German King, and later the Empire itself (after Emperor Maximilian had declared them the official state arms in 1508). I am grateful to Philip Lankester of the Royal Armouries, Leeds, for additional heraldic information and terminology. 112 Van Anrooij, Helden van weleer, pp. 41, 83, mentions a Nine Worthies pageant in Atrecht in 1336 as the earliest recorded occurrence of this heraldry. 113 Tátrai, ‘Darstellung Sigismunds’, pp. 143-67, fig. 10; Colling-Kerg, ‘Iconographie’, esp. 191-94. 114 This is also how Charlemagne is depicted in a miniature in a manuscript of c. 1310-20 of Jacob van Maerlant’s Middle Dutch Spiegel Historiael (The Hague, KB MS KA XX, fol. 217v): see M. Meuwese, Beeldend Vertellen. De verluchte handschriften van Jacob van Maerlants Rijmbijbel en Spiegel Historiael, doctoral thesis (Leiden, 2001), p. 110. Although this heraldry was fictitious, Charlemagne had used the eagle as an emblem of the Holy Roman Emperor; see Van Anrooij, Helden van weleer, pp. 85-86 and 238, n. 45. 115 In the Latin Totentanz stanza for the king (Appendix 6) the city (‘urbem’) mentioned would thus be Rome itself: see Leppin, ‘Lateinische Totentanz’, pp. 325-26. For Knoblochtzer’s woodcut, see Kaiser, Tanzende Tod, p. 136; the emperor (p. 134) is accosted by a dead musician whose trumpet is decorated with a banner showing the double-headed eagle. As mentioned earlier, Knoblochtzer’s edition is believed to have been modelled on Marchant’s. 116 C. Davidson, The Guild Chapel Wall Paintings at Stratford-upon-Avon (New York, 1988), fig. 20, illustrating a drawing made by William Puddephat in 1955 when the damaged mural was temporarily revealed. 117 K. Morand, Claus Sluter: Artist at the Court of Burgundy (London, 1991), pp. 54-56 and figs 13-14. Compare also C.R. Sherman, The Portraits of Charles V of France: 1338-1380 (New York, 1969); Wright, ‘The Reinvention’, pp. 129-32; and the portrait quality of Charles V’s tomb effigy by André Beauneveu in Nash, ‘No equal in any land’, chapter 1. The grande vis at the Louvre was demolished in

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the early seventeenth century; the provenance of the standing figures now in the Louvre is still a matter for debate. 118 Charles VI wore his hair short and, like his father, had no beard. Another representation of the beardless Charles VI is his statuette in an enamelled blue jacket with gold fleurs-de-lis that forms part of the famous Goldenes Rössl, a New Year’s gift from Queen Isabeau to her husband in 1405. See Taburet-Delahaye, Paris 1400, cat. 95 and P. Lorentz’s essay ‘Des rois qui se suivent mais ne se ressemblent pas: à propos des portraits de Charles V et de Charles VI’, pp. 28-30. 119 C. Sauvageot (photos), and S. Santos (text), Saint-Denis, dernière demeure des rois de France (La Pierre qui Vire, 1999), fig. 57. A record of a meeting at Saint-Denis between the king’s executors and the sculptor on 5 November 1424 is cited in M. Beaulieu and V. Beyer, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs français du Moyen Age, Bibliothèque de la Société Française d’Archéologie (Paris, 1992), p. 90. According to Taburet-Delahaye, Paris 1400, cat. 226A, Charles VI’s portrait-like tomb effigy is the first attested example of an actual death-mask in France. 120 The king in the mural is situated between the cardinal and the papal legate. Marchant’s woodcut of the king suggests that he also chose to have the figure updated, perhaps to make the king resemble Charles VIII (1470-1498), unless the mural itself had been altered by then. 121 Taylor, ‘Translation as Reception’, pp. 188, 190, and by the same author, ‘Que signifiait danse au quinzième siècle? Danser la Danse macabré’, Fifteenth Century Studies, 18 (1991), pp. 259-77, esp. p. 265. 122 B.W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (London, 1979), pp. 503-5. Fifteenth-century miniatures of this scene include BL, MS Harleian 4380, fol. 1r; BL, MS Royal 18 E II, fol. 206r; and BnF, ms.fr. 2646, fol. 176r, with thanks to Dr Martine Meuwese. 123 There is an intriguing parallel between the homme sauvage and the mort: the former represents the uncivilised or bestial side of human nature while the latter is man’s dead counterpart. 124 The Justification, which had been presented by Master Jehan Petit to the French royal court on behalf of John the Fearless in 1408 and subsequently circulated around Europe, was still debated at the Council of Constance in 1415; see R. Vaughan, John the Fearless: The Growth of Burgundian Power (1966, repr. Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 71, 210-11, pl. 4, and n. 36 above. 125 See A.M. Morganstern, ‘The La Grange Tomb and Choir: A Monument of the Great Schism of the West’, Speculum, 48 (1973), pp. 52-69. I am grateful to Prof. Pamela King for reminding me of this article. See also P.M. King, ‘Contexts of the Cadaver Tomb in Fifteenth-Century England’, unpublished DPhil thesis, University of York (1987), p. 459, and P. Pradel, ‘Le visage inconnu de Louis d’Orléans, frère de Charles VI’, Revue des Arts, 2 (1952), pp. 93-98. 126 None of the others – seneschal, chamberlain, butler and chancellor – are included in the danse. According to A. Corvisier, ‘La représentation de la société dans les danses des morts du XVe au XVIIIe siècle’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 16 (1969), pp. 489-539, at pp. 494, 516, the rank of constable was popularised by Bertrand du Guesclin (c.1320-80; constable of France 137080), the famous Breton hero of the Hundred Years War. 127 Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, p. 17; Laidlaw, ‘Alain Chartier’, p. 43. Bernard’s immediate predecessor Charles d’Albret (twice constable through Armagnac support, 1402-11 and 1413-15) had been replaced in 1411-13 by the pro-Burgundian Waleran III of Luxembourg, count of St Pol, until the latter was driven from Paris in a pro-Armagnac insurrection: see Shirley, Journal, pp. 57, n. 3, 59, 61, 95. 128 Charles of Lorraine had earlier taken the Burgundian side against Louis of Orléans and he became Constable with Burgundian support. After the murder of John the Fearless, the ambitions of Philip the Good apparently caused him to change his allegiance. 129 Richemont had been captured at Agincourt but released in 1420 to help persuade his brother John, duke of Brittany, to sign the Treaty of Troyes. Richemont’s natural allegiance was pro-English; his widowed mother Joan of Navarre had remarried King Henry IV in 1402, which made Bedford his stepbrother. The French ‘comte de Richemont’ was an old but empty English title to which the dukes of Brittany still laid claim; the actual earldom of Richmond was held by Bedford from 1414. For the constables of France and Richemont in particular, see Shirley, Journal, esp. pp. 185-86 (n. 1), 253 (n. 1), 302 (n. 2), 324-25, 330; Beaune, Journal, p. 503. 130 Corvisier, ‘Représentation de la société’, p. 507, did note the anomaly of placing the knight before the bishop but explained this away as an inconvenient consequence of the strict hierarchical sequence and lack of symmetry between clerical and lay characters, adding that in the fifteenth century many bishops were of humble birth; the absence of the duke apparently did not strike him as curious. 131 Champion, Danse Macabre, fol. a.iiii.

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Other dukes of this turbulent period included John V, duke of Brittany (1389-1442), who was an Anglo-Burgundian ally in 1423 although in 1426 he repudiated the treaty concluded at Amiens for a short-lived alliance with the dauphin (see also n. 129 above), and the duke of Alençon, who fought with Joan of Arc but subsequently abandoned Charles VII for the English cause. See Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, pp. 27, 31; Beaune, Journal, pp. 491-92. 133 An accompanying text explained the commission: ‘Lovis dorleans ajeul du / roy lovis dovziesme’. The wall-painting was destroyed c.1779. Cosacchi, Makabertanz, pp. 698-99, mistakenly followed Dufour in dating this painting to 1427 and attributing it to the painter Colart de Laon. See also Le Bot, ‘L’art macabre’, p. 287; M. Camille, The Master of Death:The Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet, Illuminator (New Haven/London, 1996), pp. 198, 200 and fig. 143. There is a second version of the drawing in Paris (BnF, Estampes, PE 1, rés., fol. 1r). 134 There is always the possibility of in-jokes, e.g. amongst the artists painting the mural, but such private cryptoportraits are usually impossible for later generations to identify. 135 The pun is in the word ‘piliatus’: in classical Latin, pileatus meant to be given a cap of liberty (pileum), which is here contrasted with Death compelling the cardinal. I am grateful to Fr. Jerome Bertram OSB for this explanation. 136 Beaufort was the illegitimate (although subsequently legitimised) second son of John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford, and thus of royal blood as half-uncle of King Henry V; he had made a brilliant church and political career. For the Bourgeois’ descriptions of Beaufort’s visits to Paris in 1427, 1429 and 1431, see Shirley, Journal, pp. 212-13, 238, 242, 269, 271 and n. 1: Beaufort offended the bishop of Paris by consecrating Henry VI himself at the 1431 coronation ceremony in Notre-Dame. 137 After Jerusalem was lost in 1187, the seat of the patriarch had been moved to Acre (until its fall in 1291) and then to Cyprus (until 1374). 138 For example, Jean de La Rochetaillee (briefly bishop of Paris in 1421-23) was also patriarch of Constantinople and Denis du Moulin (appointed bishop of Paris in 1439) was patriarch of Antioch. See Beaune, Journal, pp. 470-71. 139 Corvisier, ‘Représentation de la société’, p. 494. 140 Information on the chapter of Notre-Dame and the bishops of Paris, with a list of bishops – elected, confirmed, or otherwise – between 1384 and 1472, can be found in Beaune, Journal, pp. 470-71. 141 Tuetey, Journal, p. 357, item 796; Beaune, Journal, p. 401 and n. 7. The Bourgeois added that Du Moulin had fifty court cases with other ecclesiastical institutions in his diocese pending in parliament at this time. 142 The coat of arms bearing the greatest resemblance to the knight’s heraldic tabard is that of the family of Aumont in Picardy and Guernsey (the same as the dukes of Villequier-Aumont), which is argent a chevron gules with four martlets in chief three in base; the heraldry may have been adapted for a cadet branch. I am grateful to Dr Kristiane Lemé-Hébuterne and her colleague for this information, and to Philip Lankester for the English terminology. 143 The first four lines of le mort’s stanza to the pope are addressed to the reader; the first three lines of the stanza to the Carthusian address the preceding merchant instead; the first three lines of the stanza for the monk appear to be directed at the sergeant before him; the first one and a half lines of the stanza for the friar contain a final thought for the labourer; and the first four lines of the stanza by the first mort to the hermit are directed at the preceding clerk. In Marchant’s 1486 edition the first two lines of le mort’s stanza to the Carthusian, in which he still addresses the merchant, were amended to fit the interpolated character of the homme darmes, for whom the remaining third line about there being nothing left to conquer is more apt than for the merchant. 144 Susie Nash, personal communication in advance of her article ‘Claus Sluter’s ‘Well of Moses’ for the Chartreuse de Champmol Reconsidered: Part III’, Burlington Magazine, 150 (2008), pp. 724-41, esp. 735-41. 145 On the way back from Saint-Denis, Bedford had the King of France’s sword carried before him as Regent, which elicited further murmuring; the Parisians would have preferred the duke of Burgundy in that role. See Beaune, Journal, pp. 195-96; Shirley, Journal, pp. 182-83. 146 Tradition has it that Joan of Arc banished the dauphin’s fears about his legitimate birthright; he had been conceived at a time when Queen Isabeau was believed to have had an affair with her brother-inlaw Louis. However, M. Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (1981, repr. London, 1987), pp. 72-75, points out that it was Henry V’s supporters who questioned the dauphin’s legitimacy; officially Charles was disowned by his parents in 1420 because of the murder of John the Fearless. 147 Nash, ‘No equal in any land’, pp. 26-27. 148 Vander Linden, Itinéraires, pp. 37-43; the last sojourn was only interrupted by a visit to Noyon on 13-17 November.

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Thompson, Paris and its People, pp. 127-28 and 130. These belong to a late-medieval tradition in which the adult population used snow sculptures to depict well-known characters from the bible and popular culture, but also political allegories. See Vaughan, Philip the Good, p. 67; R. Muchembled, Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France moderne (XVe-XVIIIe siècles). Essai (Paris, 1978), pp. 161-65, which cites the full town record on pp. 161-62; G. Besnier, ‘Quelques notes sur Arras et Jeanne d’Arc’, Revue du Nord, 40 (1958), pp. 51-62. H. Pley, De sneeuwpoppen van 1511. Stadscultuur in de late middeleeuwen (Amsterdam 1988), p. 17, cites an earlier example at Tournoi in 1422, where a snow sculpture of a lion herding a flock of sheep was interpreted by the population as a king guarding his subjects’ welfare. 151 Muchembled, Culture populaire, p. 162. Here le Mort probably means la Mort: le is a feminine article in Picardian. The use of ‘manouvrier’ without a definite article is curious, as is the order and choice of only secular characters in this brief description. I am grateful to Dr Jelle Koopmans for his comments on this intriguing text. 152 Wijsman, ‘Danse Macabre’. The manuscript is recorded in the inventory of Philip the Good’s library made after his death on 15 June 1467, while the ducal accounts for 1449 list a payment to the Douai painter Nicaise de Cambray for enacting the play with his companions before the duke. See Clark, Dance of Death, p. 92. 150

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‘Owte of the frensshe’: John Lydgate and the Dance of Death John Lydgate’s poem The Dance of Death was a translation ‘Owte of the frensshe’, as the author himself stated in his translator’s ‘Envoye’ at the end of the poem, yet ‘Not worde be worde / but folwyng the substaunce’ (E:665-66) – an ancient topos.1 Even so, Lydgate’s poem was indeed no slavish imitation but an adaptation of a French poem that had been attracting attention since its incorporation in a wall-painting at the cemetery of Les Innocents in Paris not long before Lydgate’s presumed visit in 1426. Despite being an early adaptation of a popular French text, Lydgate’s Middle English Dance of Death has received less notice than it deserves, due to a number of factors. First of all, Lydgate’s reputation greatly declined after the sixteenth century and his ‘aureate’ style is no longer admired, which has affected the study of his work, although there has recently been a revival of Lydgate studies.2 Secondly, the poem is only a minor work in Lydgate’s huge oeuvre of well over 140,000 lines, and its didactic character has not endeared it to many literary scholars. Finally, the poem has been rather unfairly regarded as a ‘mere’ translation rather than as an original work in its own right, whatever its merits. Even Lydgate revivalists tend to ignore the poem.3 While important, the aspect of estates satire will be addressed to a lesser degree here: Chaucer’s influence on Lydgate has already received much scholarly attention. Instead, the aim of this chapter is to investigate the genesis and character of Lydgate’s Dance, its incorporation in the painted scheme at Pardon Churchyard in London that helped popularise the theme yet further, and the revision(s) of the text. In addition, the poem will be compared to the French text and studied for further evidence of the lost mural in Paris that apparently inspired its composition.

The poet John Lydgate and his visit to Paris Born c.1371 at Lydgate in Suffolk, John Lydgate entered the novitiate at the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds c.1387 where he was ordained priest on 7 April 1397.4 In 1406-8 he was at Gloucester College in Oxford, where he appears to have attracted the attention of the Prince of Wales (later Henry V), but there is no record of his taking a degree.5 Nothing certain is known about his early poetic work until 31 October 1412 when he began his huge Troy Book (a translation of Guido della Colonna’s Historia Destructionis Troiae) at Prince Henry’s request; it was not finished until 1420. His next major work was The Siege of Thebes (1420-21). As a monk, Lydgate would have needed his abbot’s permission to travel, and good grounds for going out into society. There is no external proof to corroborate Lydgate’s 1426 visit to Paris, whether safe-conduct or payment: the evidence lies instead in his poems. He may have travelled to Paris to receive a commission from the earl of Warwick to write the propaganda poem The Title and Pedigree of Henry VI (actually a ‘translacioun’ of a French poem by Laurence Calot, a notary serving the duke of Bedford in Paris).6 Admittedly, Warwick could have given him this commission before setting sail for France, but a rubric by the London copyist John Shirley (1366-1456) states that the poem was ‘made by Lydygate Iohn the monke of Bury, at Parys, by the instaunce of my Lord of Warrewyk’.7 In 1426 Lydgate was

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commissioned by Thomas Montacute, earl of Salisbury (Bedford’s deputy in France), to translate Guillaume de Deguilleville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, ‘My lord that tyme beyng at Paris’, as Lydgate explained in his prologue, and this appears to confirm the year of his own stay there.8 One can only speculate about how long Lydgate remained in Paris. Some authors assume that he was there for several years, but there is no evidence for an extended sojourn and it is doubtful that the ‘monk of Bury’ could have obtained such long leave of absence from his abbot.9 Whilst in Paris, as Lydgate states in his ‘Verba translatoris’ prologue, he took ‘acqueyntaunce’ of ‘frensshe clerkes’, who persuaded him to undertake a translation of the Danse Macabre poem that he ‘fownde depicte’ on a wall there (E:22,20); typical of Lydgate’s convoluted style is the mention of the location ‘at seint Innocentis’ only two stanzas later (E:35). The cemetery was not very far from Warwick’s residence in Paris and thus easy for Lydgate to visit (Fig. 1). Otherwise, Lydgate’s rather vague explanation raises some unanswerable questions. For example, it is unclear why the unnamed clerks should have been so eager to persuade him to undertake a translation of the poem, as implied by Lydgate’s use of the words ‘avyse’, ‘cownseille’, ‘sterynge’, ‘mocioune’, and ‘requeste’ (E:25-27). Lydgate seems curiously reticent: he frequently boasts of his aristocratic patrons in his other compositions, so why would he link this poem to some unnamed French clerks? He also fails to mention the author of the poem that had been included in the recently created mural there, but then the original author may have been unknown to him. However, it must have been his own choice not to name the French clerks – or single clerk in some versions10 – who (as he claimed) instigated his translation. 1. (Left) Map of medieval Paris: the red arrow indicates the location of the church and cemetery of Les Saints Innocents. Compare also chapter 2, fig. 3.

Lydgate’s use of the word ‘ones’ in the lines ‘the exawmple whiche that at Parise / I fownde depicte ones on a walle’ (E:19-20) suggests that he was looking back in time when writing the prologue. Likewise, his ‘Envoye de translatoure’ states that he ‘fro Paris to Inglond hit sent’ (E:667), again implying an event in the past. The conclusion must be that these stanzas were later additions to his original translation of the French poem. Lydgate is commonly assumed to have composed the first, so-called A version of his Dance of Death before 1430 and then revised the text himself not

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long after, presumably to suit the painted scheme commissioned for Pardon Churchyard. The case for this later, so-called B text being a revision by Lydgate himself and the version used in the scheme at Old St Paul’s will be examined later. Lydgate’s description of his Dance as a ‘pleyne translacioun / in Inglisshe tunge’ (E:28-29) is an understatement. It was standard practice for medieval authors to adapt popular foreign texts, and most did not stop at mere translation.11 Lydgate was particularly inclined to add embellishments in the often convoluted ‘aureate’ style that characterises most of his work – and that later editors of his work have found difficult to admire.12 The last lines of his ‘Envoye’ illustrate this modesty topos well: Rude of langage y was not borne yn fraunce Haue me excused my name is Jon Lidgate Of her tunge I haue no suffisaunce Her corious metris In Inglissh to translate. Amen. (E:669-72)

Lydgate remained highly influential well into the sixteenth century, although there are occasional notes of dissent about his style even then.13 His compositions survive in a great number of manuscript copies and were amongst the first texts to be printed by early publishers such as William Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson. However, regard for his work subsequently declined so dramatically that many scholars have felt compelled to adopt an apologetic or defensive stance.14 The Dance of Death has been relatively little studied since Florence Warren’s EETS edition of 1931.15 Lydgate scholars appear to have regarded the work mainly as a close and ‘extremely skilful’ translation of the French poem, with Lydgate showing himself ‘the most perfect of imitators’.16 Admittedly, Rosemary Woolf noted in 1968 that Lydgate deviated from his French model in some key respects, but this observation has not really been taken further.17 Continental danse macabre scholars have likewise paid scant attention to Lydgate, perhaps because his poem seems unlikely to contribute anything to the chicken-or-egg debate about the very beginnings of the theme – whether Latin, French or German. Yet the fact that Lydgate’s Middle English poem was composed at a very early date in the recorded history of the danse macabre makes it an important piece of evidence, quite apart from its literary merits.

Texts and dissemination The idea that Lydgate’s Dance of Death can be dismissed as merely derivative would seem to be borne out by Derek Pearsall’s overall assessment of the poet in 1970: ‘Like any competent professional, he did what was asked of him, and, working within an established literary tradition, he had neither the desire, nor the incentive, nor the creative power to make things new’.18 Nonetheless, Pearsall described writing about this poem, compared to the author’s Pilgrimage of the same period, as ‘a more congenial task’.19 He noted how Lydgate evidently relished not only the gnomic quality of the French poem but also the chance to end some of the victims’ stanzas with a truism or proverb, especially one related to the speaker’s profession as in the physician line ‘A-3ens dethe is worth no medicyne’ (E:432).20 With mixed praise, Pearsall summed up Lydgate’s achievement in the Dance of Death as follows: In the Danse Macabre, what Lydgate had to do for once happily coincided with what he could best do. There is no need for any development of ideas, no narrative, no exposition, only variation, reiteration, insistence on the call of death and man’s reply, a prolonged and varied antiphon – ‘You must die’: ‘I must die’.21

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Lydgate not only translated but also adapted his source text, however. One crucial difference between the French Danse and Lydgate’s version is the change of le mort into ‘Death’; only twice does Death invite a figure to dance with ‘us’ (E:222, 317), which may refer to his other victims. The change into Death personified is important in terms of the genesis, reception and development of the theme. The four remaining instances in the Danse of le mort accosting the preceding character in the first few lines of his new stanza connect the French poem with the Spanish Dança, where this feature occurs throughout (see chapter 2). The likelihood is that these linking addresses from an earlier version of the Danse were almost all abandoned when the poem was subsequently revised; Lydgate omits them altogether in his Dance. Such textual linking of several living and dead dancers in a row might be even more logical if the danse had its origins in an actual performance. Yet the personification of Death has a long history in art, literature and drama, and the great dramatic potential of a dialogue between Death and the living must have appealed to Lydgate as it did to others; in later French Danse texts le mort also becomes la mort. The co-existence of the two distinct A and B versions of Lydgate’s Dance of Death has posed problems for editors and scholars alike. If Lydgate first produced a fairly close translation of the French poem, then added the translator’s stanzas, and finally revised this A version, this would presuppose three separate stages of composition within a short space of time, provided one accepts a date of c.1430 for the revision.22 Yet there are more extant copies of the A text, which is also the longer version as it has one more character than B as well as the translator’s stanzas:23 the text in MS Ellesmere 26/A.13 (Huntingdon Library, California) contains 672 lines against 584 in BL MS Lansdowne 699. Moreover, there are not only variations between the characters in A and B, but also a different order of stanzas throughout the extant versions (see Appendix 2). Pearsall concluded that trying to work out the composition process of the two versions of Lydgate’s poem would be a laborious and probably impossible task: the two groups are not entirely clearly distinguished; there is no set order after the first ten or so of the 36 victims; there are several victims added and others left out in different manuscripts; the names are changed; there is extensive mechanical disarrangement of leaves in an early exemplar; and there are many opportunities for enthusiastic copyists to introduce new stanzas in such a poem. In fact it is clear that some of the added stanzas in the B version are not by Lydgate, and the Danse resembles other poems by Lydgate in being a kind of do-it-yourself kit which anyone could add to, composed according to an indefinitely repeatable design. It would be difficult, in such circumstances, to talk about stages in a process of revision.24

Medieval texts often show variance with parts altered, missing or added, as well as other divergences that cannot simply be explained as authorial revision.25 There is thus no guarantee that either version is wholly Lydgate’s. The complications indicated by Pearsall were also recognised by Warren, who divided the twelve manuscript versions of the Dance known to her into groups A and B; as representatives of A and B she edited the Ellesmere and Lansdowne Manuscript versions. Warren warned of variations within each group in the inclusion, order and labelling of characters; for example, some manuscript copies label the characters in Latin, some in English, while others do not label them at all. The title of the poem also varies: thus, Trinity College Cambridge MS R.3.21 in the A group uses the title ‘Daunce of Machabre’, whereas the B version in Leiden University Library MS

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Vossius C.G.Q. 9 starts with ‘incipit Macrobius’ and finishes with ‘Explicit Macrabiorum’ – an indication of how the term ‘macabre’ has baffled not just modern scholars. More worrying is the ‘serious disorder’ of stanzas that Warren noted not only in the latter half of the B text versions, but also throughout the Ellesmere Manuscript (which she reordered for her edition). She tried to explain this disorder as caused by a disarrangement of leaves in an underlying lost master copy used by Lydgate himself for a revision that he never completed.26 Yet her interpretation of the evidence presumes authorial revision rather than the very real possibility of scribal intervention or mouvance. Warren’s explanation of an uncompleted revision by Lydgate may be plausible in itself, but it undermines the traditional belief that this revision was undertaken specifically for the scheme in Pardon Churchyard. Warren even implied that Lydgate continued revising the poem: after pointing out that there are no female characters in the French poem, she claimed that ‘all those in our text are original additions [...] probably made at different periods’.27 Yet she does not explain why Lydgate would wish to continue rewriting such a minor poem when he was busy composing so many other new poems, including his major work The Fall of Princes (c.1430-38). Revision has not really improved the poem, either: an earlier editor, Eleanor Hammond, already noted ‘the general agreement of A-texts’ compared to the divergences of the B versions from each other, adding that the latter ‘resemble one another in a colorlessness, a tendency to empty generalities, wherever the A-type is abandoned’.28 Warren’s list was subsequently extended to fifteen manuscript copies by M.C. Seymour (who subdivided Warren’s original two groups into four sub-groups), and further refined by Derek Pearsall and Anthony Edwards.29 Quite apart from the question of whether all these revisions can be safely ascribed to Lydgate himself, Seymour’s sub-groups illustrate the complications of trying to compare the various text versions of Lydgate’s Dance of Death. For example, his sub-group D largely follows the order of sub-group C (both variants of Warren’s B group, which emerged around 1435 according to Seymour), but with the doctor utriusque iuris as a new character, new verses for the minstrel, and the sequence of the last ten characters altered.30 The division into sub-groups does not help explain which parts of the poem – if any – were revised by Lydgate himself, however. Increasing awareness of medieval scribes and their practices has meant that it is no longer safe to rely on the traditional assumption that the B version is Lydgate’s own revision of the A version, or on the B text being the version used for the scheme in Pardon Churchyard. A full comparison and analysis of the various text versions will require further study, but the problem of textual variance is too important to be ignored and the issue will be raised again later. For the sake of clarity and consistency, references will continue to be made to Warren’s groups A and B. No autograph copy of the poem exists although some extant copies may have been produced in Lydgate’s lifetime: only BL MS Cotton Vespasian A. xxv dates probably to the sixteenth century.31 The number of extant manuscript copies suggests that the poem was well known. The first complete printed version with just two woodcut illustrations was published only in 1554 by Richard Tottel in London as an appendix to Lydgate’s Fall of Princes. Its publication may have been inspired by antiquarian interest in Pardon Churchyard scheme, destroyed only five years previously, yet the prominence of the clergy in Tottel’s opening woodcut (Introduction, fig. 12) may also reflect the return to Catholicism under Queen Mary.32 Tottel’s version of the Dance was reprinted by William Dugdale in his History of St Paul’s Cathedral in London (1658) and in his Monasticon Anglicanum (1673).33

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An apparent argument against the popularity of the danse in England is the lack of earlier Dance of Death editions by pioneering English printers such as Caxton, de Worde and Pynson, to name but three of Marchant’s near-contemporaries across the Channel who published other works by the still popular Lydgate. Woolf contrasted this lack with the popularity of the theme on the Continent: The difference here is that there is no evidence in England of an actual popular taste for literature on the subject of death. The speed with which Guyot Marchand produced editions of the Danse macabre and variations upon it suggests the commercial judgement of a businessman rather than the didactic concern of a preacher. Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde were no doubt likewise shrewdly sensitive to the demands of popular taste, but ignored the poetry of death. There is no suggestion in England, as there is in France and Germany, that a perverse enjoyment was derived from the fear of 34 death and from death’s distressing physical signs.

The evidence of a continuing fascination with death in literature and art, including the number of extant cadaver monuments (see chapter 7), belies Woolf’s denial of such a ‘perverse enjoyment’ in England. It may well have been the necessary investment in bespoke woodcuts for an illustrated edition of Lydgate’s Dance that early English printers found prohibitive (see also chapter 2). However, Lydgate’s Dance had appeared in print prior to Tottel’s edition: twenty stanzas with ten accompanying woodcuts (Fig. 2) were included in the small-sized Horae Beate Marie Virginis (Use of Sarum) printed c.1521 by Johan Bignon in Paris for the London bookseller Richard Fakes (Faques).35 The only extant copy of these Horae (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce BB.53) was at one time owned by Francis Douce.36 The poem is incomplete and the order of characters somewhat haphazard: the stanzas are those of Death and the pope, emperor, cardinal, patriarch, judge, king, archbishop, knight, mayor and baron/earl. Red rubrics underneath each woodcut identify the characters; the verse dialogue is printed as prose because of the narrow text area. The inclusion of the judge and the mayor corresponds to the B version, but there are textual divergences. For example, the king’s penultimate line ‘who is moost meke I holde he is moost sage’ matches the A version’s ‘Who is moste meke I holde he is moste sage’ (E:119) instead of ‘Who that is most meek hath most avauntage’ (L:111) in B. Also, the king’s fourth line ‘wat pride is wo[r]th or force of hie lignage’ is closer to ‘What pride is worth force or hye lynage’ (E:116) than to ‘What pride is worth force or high parage’ (L:108).37 More research is needed into the model for Fakes’ text and also into the source for Bignon’s woodcuts (compare Figs 2-3). One plausible explanation is that the latter were originally part of a complete (but since lost) early printed edition of Lydgate’s Dance of Death and merely inserted rather haphazardly at the end of the Horae to fill the remaining ten empty pages.38 It is equally possible, however, that Bignon in turn re-used woodcuts from a different, but as yet unidentified French Danse Macabre edition. The ornamental arches and outdoor settings strewn with plants are reminiscent of Marchant’s woodcuts (Appendix 1), but Bignon’s woodcuts show single dead figures each flanking their victims on the right; the exception is the emperor, who is dragged off to the left and whose woodcut features a different background (Fig. 2). The suggestion of perfunctory and partial re-use by Bignon of an available larger scheme is reinforced by the inappropriate choice of woodcuts for the stanzas:39 for example, the fourth woodcut illustrates a Carthusian instead of the patriarch of the matching stanza, while a woodcut of a patriarch accompanies the

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archbishop’s stanza (Fig. 2). Likewise, the earl or baron is dressed more like a merchant or burgher, whereas the supposed mayor with his rather fanciful armour, raised sword and baton must represent the constable (Fig. 2); outfit worn by the supposed Lord Justice is also wrong.

2. (Above) The pope, the emperor, the archbishop (actually the patriarch) and the mayor (probably the constable), woodcuts accompanying stanzas from Lydgate’s Dance of Death in a printed edition of the Horae Beate Marie Virginis produced c.1521 in Paris by Johan Bignon for the London bookseller Richard Fakes. Compare the pope in fig. 3 and also Appendix 1 for Marchant’s woodcuts of the pope and constable. 3. (Left) The pope, detail from a danse macabre border decoration in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430 (Paris, BNF ms. Rothschild 2535, fol. 108v): see also chapter 2, fig. 7.

As will be evident from this section, the dissemination of Lydgate’s poem is extremely complicated, not merely because of the ‘revision’ of the original A version or the likelihood of scribal divergences and interpolation of new lines or stanzas not by the author himself (see below). Lydgate almost appears to invite his readers to interfere with his text when he asks these ‘lordes and maistres’ to support his translation and ‘To correcte where as 3e see nede’ (E:660). Although this appeal is part of the modesty topos, some admirers may have taken the invitation further than the author intended. The fairly large number of extant manuscripts suggests that Lydgate’s Dance was popular and well known, and the variances are further evidence of engagement with the text, even if the late appearance of the poem in print would seem to contradict its renown. Admittedly, Bignon’s incomplete Dance edition in the Horae of c.1521 predates Tottel’s by more than three decades, but it does not constitute firm evidence of an earlier full (but lost) Dance of Death edition.40 The inclusion in Bignon’s Horae of parts of Lydgate’s Dance may initially have been inspired by the frequent occurrence of danse macabre woodcuts as marginal decorations in books of hours that were published from the late fifteenth century by other Parisian printers such as Antoine Vérard, Simon Vostre and Thielman Kerver.41 Yet whereas the marginal woodcuts in French books of hours do not comprise accompanying texts except for labels identifying each character, Fakes must have supplied Bignon with Lydgate’s verses specifically for inclusion in these Horae for the English market. The combination of stanzas and woodcuts – even if incomplete and with incorrect illustrations in places – suggests that Fakes expected his clientele to know and appreciate the Dance either as a poem by Lydgate or as the scheme from St Paul’s in which images and texts were considered equally important.

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Lydgate’s Dance of Death and the ‘Dance’ of Old St Paul’s Cathedral The mural at Les Innocents in Paris, which is still the earliest datable example of the danse, may have been followed fairly closely by the lost scheme commissioned for Old St Paul’s Cathedral in London, which featured a version of Lydgate’s Dance of Death poem (Fig. 4).42 Walter Schirmer’s interpretation of the testimony by the antiquarian John Stow (1525-1605) cited below was that Lydgate sent his translation of the French poem from Paris to London where it captured the interest of John Carpenter (c.1372-1442), who then suggested that the text be included in a similar painted scheme in the cloister of Pardon Churchyard.43 Schirmer added: ‘The verses provided an explanatory commentary on the paintings. It is striking how often Lydgate wrote works for such a purpose.’44

4. Precinct of Old St Paul’s Cathedral, London, c.1500, with Pardon Churchyard to the north of the nave (red arrow) and the charnel house with the chapel of the Virgin Mary above it (blue arrow), situated along Paternoster Row, and Paul’s Cross to the north of the choir (circled in green).

There is no absolute proof that Lydgate wrote his Dance of Death with such a painted scheme in mind.45 None of the surviving manuscript copies of the poem are illustrated, but the same is true of early extant copies of the French text. References to Lydgate’s readers ‘seeing’ the dance vary per version. For example, the French acteur in the prologue addresses the viewer (rather than the reader) with ‘Tu vois les plus grans commancer’, but Lydgate changes this line completely.46 Allusions to visual imagery instead occur earlier in both the A and B prologue with the exhortation ‘3e mai sene here doctryne ful notable’ (E:43, L:3 – my italics). If this line suggests that Lydgate composed his translation with a visual scheme in mind, then the emphasis on visual imagery is reinforced in the B version where the line ‘How 3e schulle trace the daunce of machabre’ (E:46) was changed to read ‘How ye shal trace the daunce which that ye see’ (L:6 – my italics). Even so, this by itself does not prove that it was the B version on which the Pardon Churchyard scheme was based, for the term ‘daunce of machabre’ tends not to be used in B version manuscripts whose titles instead refer to ‘Macrobius’ or more generically to the ‘Daunce of Powlys’ (see below).47 Lydgate

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must have seen the mural during his visit to Paris, but it is not certain that he copied the text himself in situ with the paintings in front of him; he might have based his translation on a manuscript copy obtained locally – perhaps one that contained illustrations or even variations on the text at Les Innocents. Lydgate’s huge oeuvre indicates that he was a fast worker so he could easily have composed the relatively short Dance while in France, as his ‘Envoye’ implies. One suggestion is that he sent his original translation from Paris to his supposed literary friend John Shirley in London, who copied numerous works by Chaucer, Lydgate and others. The two men may have been acquainted; Pearsall even referred to Shirley as being ‘at once his [Lydgate’s] publisher and his literary agent’.48 However, the idea of Shirley being a commercial entrepreneur who ran a highly successful ‘lending library’ has since been questioned. According to a recent study, Shirley may have been in France himself as a member of Warwick’s retinue around this time;49 he only settled in London in the late 1420s, already an old man.50 Instead of a commercial copyist and book producer, Shirley may have been an amateur gentleman of letters with a predilection for the work of Lydgate and other Chaucerian poets; although he did lend out his books and anthologies, others may not have been copied until after his death. Shirley dabbled in poetry and also engaged in translation work himself, adding material of his own in places: a ‘tendency towards expansiveness’ and a ‘preference for elaboration’ are noted of his translation of the French Secret des Secres.51 If Lydgate sent his Dance of Death from Paris to England, there is no proof that Shirley was its recipient. Yet it may have been admirers like Shirley who ‘revised’ the poem. Whatever the circumstances surrounding Lydgate’s original translation of the French Danse Macabre text and its initial reception in England, the poem somehow attracted the attention of John Carpenter. According to the first edition of John Stow’s Survay of London published in 1598, There was also one great Cloyster on the North side of this church, inuironing a plot of ground, of old time called Pardo[n] church yard, whereof Thomas More (Deane of Pauls) was either the first builder, or a most especiall benefactor, and was buried there. About this Cloyster, was artificially & richly painted, the dance of Machabray, or dance of death, commonly called the dance of Pauls: the like wherof, was painted about S. Innocents cloister, at Paris, in Fra[n]ce: the metres or poesie of this daunce, were translated out of French into English, by Iohn Lidgate, the Monke of Bery, & with ye picture of Death, leading all estates painted about the Cloyster: at the speciall request and dispence of Iankin Carpenter, in the Raigne of Henry the 6. In this Cloyster were buried many persons, some of worship, and others of honour: the monuments of whom, in number and curiouse workemanship, passed all other that were in that church.52

Carpenter, secretarius of the City of London, was a wealthy and educated man who was named as principal executor in the will of the famous London mayor Richard (‘Dick’) Whittington (1358?-1423). As Town Clerk he was acquainted with many men of culture, including the prolific preacher-poet William Lichfield, the author Reginald Peacock, and possibly the poet Thomas Hoccleve (1366/7-1426), who worked as a scribe in the Privy Seal Office and who addressed the petitionary Ballade to Master John Carpenter to him.53 Whether or not Lydgate was part of Carpenter’s intimate circle, the two men could have been acquainted professionally: in the 1420s Lydgate was commissioned to write a number of ‘mummings’ or pageants, not just for the court but also for some of the leading London guilds.54

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Stow’s 1598 mention of Carpenter as the patron who commissioned this first painted Dance of Death scheme in England may be based on a rubric to the poem in the fifteenth-century Trinity College Cambridge MS R.3.21 (see below). Slightly different details are provided in a shorter account published in the 1603 edition of Stow’s Survay, which the title page claims to be a new text based on the 1598 edition ‘Since by the same Author increased, with diuers rare notes of Antiquity’. While incorrectly – but perhaps significantly – redating Carpenter’s commission to Henry V’s reign, the text introduces interesting new elements: Iohn Carpenter Towne Clarke of London, in the raigne of Henrie the fift, caused with great expences to bee curiously painted vpon boord, about the North Cloyster of Paules, a monument of death, leading all estates, with the speeches of death, and answere of euerie state. This Cloyster was pulled downe 1549.55

It is impossible to verify Stow’s claim that the scheme was ‘curiously painted vpon boord’, rather than directly onto the walls, or on what documents he based his assertion about the ‘great expences’. A wall-painting might seem more logical yet Stow’s revised account – perhaps based on his own recollections or on testimony from others – could be reliable evidence to the contrary: apart from being a keen observer interested in minute details, Stow was also a born Londoner and old enough to have seen the scheme before its destruction.56 Exactly when Carpenter commissioned the Dance of Death paintings is unknown but there may be a connection with another project at Old St Paul’s Cathedral. On 12 January 1430 Carpenter was granted a licence to pay eight marks a year for a chantry priest in the old chapel of the Virgin Mary situated above the charnel house on the north side of St Paul’s Precinct, bordering the houses on Paternoster Row (see Fig. 4).57 Consequently, a date of c.1430 is often cited for the commission of the Dance of Death scheme at the nearby Pardon Churchyard, and thus for Lydgate’s supposed revision of the original A version at Carpenter’s request.58 As we have seen, however, the question of authorial revision is debatable, and because there is no firm link between Carpenter’s two projects at Old St Paul’s Cathedral the licence to found a chantry there cannot serve as definite proof for the date of the Dance of Death paintings or, for that matter, of the revised poem. Pardon Churchyard was one of several burial places within the precinct of St Paul’s Cathedral. It became an elite and enclosed burial ground although, just like Les Innocents in Paris, it also served as a cemetery for London parishes lacking their own churchyards and it furthermore received the bodies of destitute citizens who had died in the vicinity.59 Unlike at the cemetery of Les Innocents, however, sermons and public announcements took place not in Pardon Churchyard but around Paul’s Cross in the great cemetery north of the choir (Fig. 4).60 Nothing remains of Carpenter’s Dance of Death paintings since the demolition of Pardon Churchyard in 1549, but Sir Thomas More’s brief but telling allusion (see Introduction) implies wide-spread familiarity with the scheme or at least with the idea of what it represented. Because of the renown of this first English danse macabre scheme, the Dance of Death soon became known in England as the ‘Dance of [St] Paul’s’. Already in late 1440s Bristol, a shoe-maker named William Wytteney spent the substantial sum of £18 on ‘a memorial that every man should remember his own death, that is to say, the Dawnse of Powlys’ for display in the church of All Saints (see also chapter 8).61 Wytteney’s will illustrates how rapidly the theme became known across the country by the generic name of ‘Dance of Paul’s’, a term also used in other records of the

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period; yet Wytteney’s textile hanging (presumably stained cloth) need not have been closely modelled on the London scheme. It seems likely that Lydgate was directly involved in Carpenter’s Dance of Death scheme at Pardon Churchyard, albeit that he may not have had a patron for such a project in mind when he first translated the French poem. He certainly knew of the scheme, for in another of his poems about the transitoriness of life, Tyed with a Lyne, he reminds the readers that ‘Both high and lough shal go on dethis daunce, / Renne vnto Powlis, beholde the Machabe [sic]’.62 This original term for the Dance, but without reference to St Paul’s, is also used in another poem sometimes attributed to Lydgate, The Prohemy of a Mariage betwix an Olde Man and a Yonge Wife, and the Counsail, &c., where a philosopher friend warns the old man of the title: Make thou no doute but thou may leed the daunce Of Makabre, and the mene-while thi wife Is syker of suche as she loved in thi life.63

These two references bring to mind Jehan le Fèvre’s line ‘Je fis de Macabré la dance [...]’, which may also refer to such a poem by the writer himself (see chapter 2). It is interesting that both Tyed with a Lyne and The Prohemy mention the term Machabe/Makabre, which matches its use in the A version text and brings us back to the question of which version was used in the Pardon Churchyard scheme. Besides causing editorial problems, the textual variance also affects how one views Carpenter’s lost scheme. First of all, the omission of the translator’s verses in the B version raises questions about whether Lydgate was himself named or depicted in the scheme. Mention should be made here of the Dance of Death mural in the Guild Chapel at Stratford, which was probably executed in the early sixteenth century (see Introduction). Its text appears to have been largely based on the B version, albeit with certain characteristics of A. Yet inspection in 1950 of what remained of the mural suggested that the first and third stanzas of the ‘Verba translatoris’ from the start of the A version were rather incongruously included at the very end of the scheme, apparently without the final ‘Envoye’.64 In other words, textual variance also affected how the scheme was presented in art or, vice versa, the text may have been adapted to suit a painted scheme. Secondly, the variation in characters between the two main versions is considerable: nine figures in the A version are replaced by eight new ones in the B text, while the order and labelling of characters also differs. In a recent article, Amy Appleford presented an interesting new interpretation of the lost scheme that hinges, however, on one key assumption: The B version, which I take to be Lydgate’s revision for the Daunce of Poulys project (not least because it bears the title Daunce of Poulys in two manuscripts), reorders the A version in a number of places and omits several characters from this version while adding eight new ones, seemingly with a 65 powerful London civic audience in mind.

Rather than argue the case for the B version being Lydgate’s own revision for Carpenter’s scheme, Appleford assumed this to be correct ‘not least’ because two manuscript versions of the B text bear the title ‘Daunce of Poulys’; she then proceeded to explain how well the revised Dance fitted the civic setting of the London churchyard. Yet, as we have seen, ‘Daunce of Poulys’ was a generic term used for any version of the theme and not a specific reference to the version displayed in Pardon

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Churchyard. Therefore, its occurrence in the title of only two manuscript copies is a spurious argument to use in support of the B version or any new hypothesis. If one dare rely on titles used for the poem, more cogent evidence for the A text being the version used for Carpenter’s scheme is found in the rubric to the A version of the poem in Trinity College Cambridge MS R. 3. 21, which states: This Daunce of machabre is depaynted rychly at sent innocents closter in parys in fraunce. Ere foloweth the Prologe of the Daunce of Machabre translatyd by Dan John lydgate monke of Bury out of Frensshe in to englyssh whiche now is callyd the Daunce of Poulys. & these wordes paynted in ye cloystar at ye dispensys & request of Jankyn Carpynter.66

This rubric not only provides the history of the poem, its author and the name of the patron who commissioned the paintings, but also explains that the ‘Daunce of Machabre’ is now called the ‘Daunce of Poulys’. Furthermore, it claims to offer the text as painted in Carpenter’s scheme, i.e. the A version. Nonetheless, there are problems. This fifteenth-century manuscript features a new one-stanza Envoy in Latin before the ‘Verba auctoris’, which in turn is followed by two extra stanzas entitled ‘Mors ad Adam’ and ‘Adam respondit’. Then a different scribe copied the two stanzas for the empress from the B version at the bottom of the page with an inserted note ‘Dethe to ye mprise [sic] shuld folow next’ beside the rubric ‘Responsio Imperatoris’. Moreover, the Doctor’s second (variant) stanza at the end of the B text is added to the A version’s two epilogue stanzas for the ‘Doctor Machabre’. In other words, this manuscript carries its own degree of scribal variance and may therefore not be wholly reliable evidence for the composition of the Pardon Churchyard scheme, either. Even so, when Tottel printed Lydgate’s Dance in 1554, not long after the destruction of Pardon Churchyard, it was the A version that he chose to publish, complete with the translator’s stanzas. Once again there are inconsistencies. Tottel’s edition retains the constable but omits the empress, while the ‘tregetour’ and parson are placed before the juror and minstrel.67 Furthermore, the ‘Verba translatoris’ are labelled ‘Prologue’, whereas the Prologue proper is ascribed instead to the translator. Yet these are relatively minor deviations from the A version. If this late appearance in print of Lydgate’s Dance of Death was indeed prompted by antiquarian motives, surely a Fleet Street-based publisher like Tottel would have wanted his version to correspond to the famous ‘Dance of Paul’s’ in the nearby, newly demolished Pardon Churchyard, which would provide another argument in support of the A version. According to Appleford, the revision of the text for the Pardon Churchyard scheme was made ‘seemingly with a powerful London civic audience in mind’. In support of her hypothesis she also cited the reduction of courtly figures from twelve to eight and the reworking of figures belonging specifically to the urban community, which would have rendered the estate designations more nuanced. The introduction of the mayor and the omission of the ‘tregetour’ might support that idea, even if the new figure of the empress does not. Appleford furthermore mentioned the unusually positive presentation of the newly added canon regular, which might be a nod to the cathedral authorities, yet the original canon or decanus is still presented as enjoying his prebendary income too much. Interesting to observe is also the introduction of new juridical characters (including the civic famulus) in the B version, but the verses for the iudex are clumsily phrased and scan differently (see below): a poet like Lydgate would surely not mix up octosyllabic and decasyllabic verse in this way, especially in rhyme royal, which raises doubts about his authorship of these particular stanzas.68

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Yet Appleford chose to ignore the possibility that the B version is not wholly Lydgate’s. After describing how Pardon Churchyard had previously formed part of the route of the mayor’s civic processions until the enclosure of the churchyard by Dean Thomas More (d. 1421), she concluded that Carpenter’s Dance of Death scheme was a deliberate response to that enclosure as well as a canny civic expression of London’s self-perception. Clever though this hypothesis may be, it would carry more conviction if the revision could be proved to be by Lydgate and at Carpenter’s request. Appleford’s article offers no such proof and fails to address the many divergences within the six known B texts or the possibility of later interpolations. Scribes and patrons other than Carpenter may have had their own reasons for wishing to alter Lydgate’s original text, while some variance may not even be deliberate revision. A rubric in BL MS Vespasian A. xxv introduces its B variant as ‘An history & Daunce of Deathe of all estatte & degres writen in the cappell of Wortley of Wortley Hall’; this fragmentary copy is believed to date to the sixteenth century when variance in the scheme is more likely to have occurred than so soon after Lydgate’s original composition of the Dance.69 These flaws in Appleford’s argument weaken her claims about the Pardon Churchyard scheme. Nonetheless, irrespective of whether Carpenter commissioned a scheme based on the A or the B version, it is still likely that as Town Clerk he intended the Dance to be a combination of didactic warning and estates satire within a civic context, rather in the tradition of Chaucer whom Lydgate greatly admired.70 However, there may have been yet another subtext. Because of the uncertainties about Carpenter’s project and Lydgate’s text, it is impossible to reconstruct the original layout or appearance of the painted scheme at Pardon Churchyard. There are no visual records, detailed descriptions, or extant copies modelled on it, nor is there any record of the artist(s) responsible. A recent suggestion that the London scheme could have featured ‘elements of the city’s landscape’ may be wishful thinking, yet not completely impossible.71 After all, recognisable townscapes and architecture occur in other art of the period, most notably the castles in the calendar miniatures, the view of Paris as a backdrop to the Meeting of the Magi (fol. 51v) and the view of Bourges in the Adoration of the Magi (fol. 52r) in the Limbourg brothers’ Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry (Chantilly, Musée Condé) of c.1412-16.

5. Detail of the Totentanz scheme formerly in the Beichtkapelle of the Marienkirche in Lübeck (photograph predating the destruction in 1942): although the scheme was renovated in 1701 the townscape setting is believed to be based on Bernt Notke’s original design of c.1466.

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There is an admittedly later example of such a topographical element in the Totentanz of c.1466 in the Marienkirche at Lübeck: painted not directly onto the walls of the Beichtkapelle but onto canvas, it also had a townscape as its backdrop (Fig. 5).72 The Hanseatic connection between the two cities might explain how the Lübeck paintings could have been inspired by those in London. Yet such realism seems rather too innovative for English art of this period; although the scheme could have been the work of a foreign artist, there is no indication of an immediate or clear impact of any such topographical elements on painting elsewhere in England.73 Even so, it is not inconceivable that the Paris mural itself featured a townscape in the background, notwithstanding the arched settings of Marchant’s woodcuts. Such a presentation of the French capital in a monumental mural could have been an added expression of nationalistic pride, especially during the Anglo-Burgundian occupation. A similar background in the London scheme would support Appleford’s ideas, based though they are on some incorrect assumptions, but it is no more than speculation. Within 120 years of its creation Carpenter’s scheme was destroyed, as recorded by Stow: In the yeare 1549, on the tenth of Aprill, the said Chappell [in the middle of Pardon Churchyard] by commaundement of the Duke of Summerset, was begun to bee pulled downe, with the whole Cloystrie, the daunce of Death, the Tombes, and monuments: so that nothing thereof was left, but the bare plot of ground, which is since conuerted into a garden, for the Pety Canons.74

According to Appleford, the scheme was not specifically attacked for doctrinal reasons, but was instead a casualty of a new Reformation attitude towards the tomb of St Thomas Becket’s parents within the churchyard; its supposed civic message was also no longer relevant in the altered political dynamics between capital and sovereign. Yet the greater number of religious characters presented in the A version would likewise have invited attack. James Simpson noted that the structure of English society had in any case changed dramatically by 1549; the international roles of the pope, emperor and cardinal were no longer pertinent in England, while such religious characters as the abbot, abbess, monk, friar and Carthusian were definitely out of favour.75 The same argument applies to the Dance of Death at Stratford, which is unlikely to have been spared when all other potentially ‘idolatrous’ murals in the Guild Chapel were whitewashed in 1563-64 (see Introduction and below).

Prologue and epilogue, author and translator The French Danse Macabre text that Lydgate originally translated as his A version included the four stanzas with which the acteur or ‘Doctor’ introduces and concludes the poem, to which Lydgate then added his own translator’s stanzas. As discussed in chapter 2, the author of the French poem is unknown and Lydgate does not name him, either. The prologue in the Ellesmere Manuscript is labelled ‘Verba auctoris’ and only the heading for the two stanzas preceding the translator’s ‘Envoye’ mentions ‘Machabre the Doctoure’, but Lydgate seems to imply a person in his reference to ‘Macabrees daunce’ (E:24); this has fuelled speculation about the origins of the term ‘macabre’. In the French poem, the Danse is officially named by the acteur in his first stanza, ‘La dance macabre sappelle’, which Lydgate translates as an exhortation to the reader to learn how to ‘trace the daunce of machabre’ (E:46, rhyming with ‘degre’). Many purely visual schemes omit the figure of the author altogether. Morgan MS M.358 has the preacher in his red academic gown at least at the start of its series of

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danse macabre roundels (Fig. 6), but not at the end. Yet the author played a crucial textual role and we find him both at the start and the end of the French poem and – as a preacher – in both the Latin-German Totentanz (Fig. 7) and the Spanish Dança General (see Appendices 3-5). The moral lesson of the Danse would be incomplete without the explanation and admonition offered to readers by the author, who presents the theme as a mirror to all mortals destined to join the dance one day, ‘En ce miroer chascun peut lire / Qui le conuient ainsi danser’ or, in Lydgate’s close translation of these lines, ‘In this myrrow[r]e eueri wight mai fynde / That hym behoueth to go vpon this daunce’ (E:49-50). The acteur thus introduces the mural in the way that preachers such as brother Richard in Paris may have used it as a visual preaching aid. 7. (Right) The preacher in his pulpit at the end of the Totentanz mural, towards 1500, originally on the outside of the charnel house in Metnitz (Carinthia). 6. (Below) The author at his desk, start of a sequence of danse macabre medallions in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430-35 (New York, Morgan Library, MS M.359, fol. 123r).

Both the French acteur and Lydgate’s author (E:41) address the reader in the first line as a ‘creature roysonnable’ desirous of eternal life, which is a deliberate contrast to the evidence of man’s mortality in the schemes’ cemetery settings in both Paris and London. The piles of skulls and bones visible in the nearby charnel houses would have made the truth of the last lines of both stanzas abundantly clear: ‘Mort nespargne petit ne grant’ or ‘For dethe ne spareth hye ne lowe degre’ (E:48), and ‘Tout est forgie dune matiere’ or ‘Of oo matier god hathe forged al’ (E:56). Lydgate closely follows the first ten lines of the prologue by the acteur in the French poem, but then introduces his own variant lines such as ‘Death spareth not pore ne blode royal’, which occurs in both the A and B versions (E:54; L:14). It is a curious divergence for there is no specific mention of royalty in the French prologue, despite the allusions to Charles VI later in the scheme (see chapter 2); this line may merely be a new truism introduced by Lydgate, yet rhyme alone does not explain the inclusion of ‘blode royal’. In the author’s last line Lydgate adheres to the French text: ‘Of oo matier god hathe forged al’ (E:56; L:16) closely matches ‘Tout est forgie dune matiere’. The ‘Verba translatoris’ that open Lydgate’s A version consist of five stanzas in which the poet expands the didactic lesson of the French prologue and explains how the text came to be written. He does not reveal his own identity until the last stanza of his ‘Envoye’, however, where he combines the modesty topos with the statement ‘my

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name is Jon Lidgate’ (E:670). Typical of Lydgate’s elaborate style is his use of several metaphors within just a few lines. For example, the second stanza of the ‘Verba translatoris’ describes how Death does not spare those of high degree: ‘When thei schyne moste in felicite / He can abate the fresshnes of her flowres / Ther bri3t sune clipsen with hys showres’ (E:11-13). The stanza then moves from Death as the downfall of the mighty to another metaphor, viz. Fortune throwing popes, kings and emperors from her Wheel ‘Maugre the myght of al these conquerowres’ (E:15). The traditional Wheel of Fortune shows four kings rising and falling as they utter the words ‘Regnabo’, ‘Regno’, ‘Regnavi’ and ‘Sum sine regno’ (I shall reign; I am reigning; I have reigned; I am without a kingdom). Lydgate’s expansion of this image to include popes and emperors as well as kings may have been influenced by Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, which starts with the image of the Wheel of Fortune. Laurent de Premierfait completed a French translation of Boccaccio’s text in 1409 and dedicated it to the duke of Berry; John the Fearless also received a richly illuminated copy. One manuscript of Premierfait’s text, which was produced in Paris c.1415 for one of Charles VI’s Italian courtiers, opens with a miniature that shows an intriguing degree of iconographic parallels with the Danse as depicted at Les Innocents a decade or so later (Fig. 8). Instead of the traditional four kings it depicts six different figures of high rank: a fallen king beneath the Wheel, his crown rolled to the ground, who is followed by what appear to be the author with his hands in a rhetorical gesture of debate (bottom left), a scholar(?), a pope with a raised sword and orb as emblems of secular power, a constable(?) with his baton, and finally an emperor(?) tumbling down on the right.76 In the period 1430-38 Lydgate was to translate Premierfait’s prose text into verse as The Fall of Princes for his patron Duke Humphrey, Bedford’s younger brother, and in this later poem he also expressed his intention of speaking ‘Of alle estatis, off hih and louh degre’ and of ‘Shewyng a meror how al the world shal faile’.77 Lydgate’s Dance may thus have presented itself to Tottel as an appropriate coda to his edition of The Fall of Princes, especially as the second stanza of the prologue reads like an epitaph for Henry V (see below).

8. (Left) Wheel of Fortune with clockwise the figures of the fallen king (bottom), the author(?), a scholar(?), the pope, the constable(?) and the emperor(?). Manuscript of Laurent de Premierfait’s Des Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, produced in Paris c.1415 for the Luccan financier Augustin Isbarre (Sbarra), who was also an adviser to John the Fearless (Paris, BnF ms.fr. 16994, fol. 1r).

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The two-stanza epilogue is once again an adaptation by Lydgate of the French text, and revised completely in the B version. The acteur warns his readers that man is nothing: ‘Cest tout vent: chose tra[n]sitoire’. Therefore, one should think of heaven instead of following those who act as if there is neither paradise nor hell; the acteur’s ironic conclusion that such fools ‘auront chault’ (will be hot) is not found in the Dance. Lydgate’s literal translation of man being ‘But as a wynde whiche is transitorie’ (E:642) becomes a more poetic ‘puff of wynde that is transitorie’ (L:570), yet not all revision is an improvement. The warning that there is no better victory than to flee sin in order to feast in heaven is turned into a much duller exhortation in which ‘gostly liff’ rhymes with ‘gostly stryff’ (L:574, 576). Overall the B epilogue seems rather clumsy and Lydgate’s authorship questionable. Marchant concluded his 1485 edition with a short colophon giving his name and the date, but no further details about the mural or its patron; whether the wall-painting ever contained a prayer for the original patron is unknown. We also do not know if Lydgate or Carpenter were ever named in the Pardon Churchyard scheme, nor even if the translator’s verses were included. Yet some visitors might have identified the ‘Doctor’ in the scheme as the ‘monk of Bury’ himself, especially if the London paintings included cryptoportraits like the Paris mural (see chapter 2 and below).78 One printed image should be discussed in this context. Around 1520 the London publisher Richard Pynson included a woodcut in his edition of Lydgate’s Testament that has since been reproduced in various Lydgate studies and editions (Fig. 9). It is a conventional representation of a cleric in the tradition of St Jerome or Petrarch at their desks, and thus not a true portrait of Lydgate who, in any case, had been dead for some seventy years. Yet the setting – with the author seated underneath an arch supported by two decorated pillars – is reminiscent of that of the acteur in the French scheme as known through the woodcuts of Marchant’s 1485 edition, where the arches presumably reflect the setting of the Paris mural (see Appendix 1). The question is whether Pynson’s woodcut can tell us anything about the London scheme.79 From 1502 until his death in 1529/30 Pynson ran his printing business ‘at the sign of the George’ on the north side of Fleet Street, not far from St Paul’s Cathedral. Pynson must have known about Lydgate’s authorship of the famous ‘Dance of Paul’s’ poem that Sir Thomas More alluded to around this time (see Introduction). If Lydgate were widely known to be the author of the Dance, it could have been a shrewd move by Pynson, in an edition of what purports to be Lydgate’s most autobiographical poem, to base his author ‘portrait’ on the image of the ‘Doctoure’ in the scheme at St Paul’s. The early fifteenth century witnessed an increased interest in the figure of the author, as evident from extant (if posthumous) miniature portraits of Chaucer, for example.80 However, we do not know if the London paintings had arched settings like the Testament woodcut. Instead, Pynson’s print closely resembles another woodcut used by Marchant in 1491 to illustrate the acteur at the start of his Danse Macabre des Femmes (Fig. 10). ‘Lydgate’ in Pynson’s woodcut is tonsured and wearing clerical instead of academic dress, but both authors are shown in the same pose and with similar props, such as the wooden dais, the ornate pillars and foliate decoration on the spandrels, and especially the flowery pattern on the back of the writer’s elaborate chair that the later artist copied without apparently quite understanding its function.81 These similarities make it unlikely that Pynson’s woodcut was modelled on the image of the ‘Doctour’ in the Pardon Churchyard scheme, nor is it probable that the publisher chose this image because of a perceived Dance of Death connection. The woodblock may have belonged to the Parisian printer Vérard originally, and Pynson had already used this same woodcut for his 1513 edition of Lydgate’s

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Hystorye of Troye; he was to use the block again in at least six more publications up to 1529(?), of which only the Testament of c.1520 was another Lydgate text.82

9. Author writing at his desk, woodcut included as the frontispiece in Richard Pynson’s edition of Lydgate’s Testament printed in 1520(?): compare Figs 3 and 5 and the representations of the acteur in Appendix 1.

10. Lacteur at his desk, woodcut at the start of Guy Marchant’s expanded edition of the Danse Macabre des Femmes of 1491.

It was common for early printers to re-use woodcut illustrations for different works, even if the image did not always quite fit the text, and later to lend or sell the woodblock to another printer: representations of authors were especially suitable for such re-use.83 Pynson’s woodcut is but one in a string of author representations that have several features in common – whether an arched setting or a similar pose or props – and that may ultimately derive from a common prototype. Another image of a scholar at his desk, which was used even more frequently as an author ‘portrait’ by Pynson from 1497 on, and copied by both Wynkyn de Worde and Julyan Notary, also shows some similarities to the 1491 Marchant woodcut, but without the arched frame.84 The woodcut used in Pynson’s edition of the Testament is therefore not in any way a ‘portrait’ of Lydgate but a generic author portrait, nor can it serve as visual evidence for the scheme in Pardon Churchyard. Even if the figure of the author was not always considered important enough to be included in depictions of the danse in art, the prologue and epilogue were essential parts of the poem: they emphasised the moral lesson for the reader. Lydgate not only retained these stanzas but added his own translator’s verses in order to reinforce the message of his poem and to add some details about the origins of the text and his own role as translator. Unfortunately for later scholars, his explanatory details fail to name the author of the French poem or the reasons behind its translation into English.

The characters in Lydgate’s Dance of Death Lydgate’s A version matches the alternating sequence of clerical and lay characters in the French poem fairly closely, but it adds three female and two new male characters. Both poems follow a largely logical social hierarchy which contemporaries would have recognised, even if the ranking of some figures – especially the physician, lawyer and clerk – may seem anomalous. Yet the surviving B copies show a more random order and a number of new characters that may not all have been by Lydgate. The Danse Macabre poem as we know it through Marchant’s 1485 edition was itself a development from an earlier version: it includes some textual variance and

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alters the order of four characters (see chapter 2 and Appendix 3). Further disruption in the sequence of characters occurred when ten new characters were added in Marchant’s 1486 edition.85 The sequence of ten clerical and fourteen non-clerical characters in the Latin Totentanz is also rather haphazard and perhaps a sign of later variance or interpolation.86 The order of speakers in the Vado Mori verses, which are often suggested as a precursor to the Danse Macabre, offers further comparisons. The theme first appeared in France in the thirteenth century, and variations in Latin and the vernacular soon followed.87 Hellmut Rosenfeld published two related versions, of which the ‘Erfurt’ version has the shorter and more logical hierarchy of characters: papa - rex - praesul miles - monachus - legista - logicus - medicus - sapiens - dives - cultor - pauper.88 The longer ‘Paris’ version (of which Marchant included a variant in his 1486 Danse Macabre edition) shows a more arbitrary sequence: rex - papa - praesul - miles pugiles - medicus - magnus - logicus - juvenis - senior - dives - judex - pauper voluptas - genitus - pulcher visu - sapiens - stultus - vino repletus - sperans gaudens.89 A surprising omission is the emperor in both Vado Mori poems. On the whole, the characters are more generic in the ‘Paris’ version and less based on social rank than those in the Danse Macabre. The danse macabre theme lent itself well to variation and interpolation. We can observe this in the preponderance of religious characters in Morgan MS M.359, which must reflect a deliberate choice by the unknown patron of this bespoke book of hours. It seems plausible that the original danse was based on a logical hierarchy of alternating clerical and lay characters, which was largely followed in the scheme in Paris and by Lydgate.90 This arrangement was subsequently affected by variance and the addition of new characters; a process that occurred wherever the theme was developed further by writers or artists for whom the original order was less important. Lydgate may have based his poem on the French Danse yet he could not but be influenced by the medieval tradition of estates satire, especially Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It is well known that Chaucer was a major influence on Lydgate and the two works have many characters in common.91 Space does not allow yet another comparison of the two authors nor an exhaustive study of each character in both versions of Lydgate’s Dance, but an overview will help explain the nature of the poem, its satire as well as its variance. The characters will be discussed in four groups, viz. the clerical male figures; the lay male figures; youth as represented by the squire, the amorous squire and the amorous gentlewoman; and the other new male and female figures introduced in both versions. The main focus will be on the A text, but variations between the A and B versions will be indicated when appropriate; where both versions are virtually identical, the Ellesmere Manuscript version will be quoted but with reference to the matching lines in the Lansdowne Manuscript copy as edited by Warren. ƔThe clerical male characters in Lydgate’s Dance of Death The term ‘clerical’ is used here in its widest sense of literate or educated. Few of the characters are prepared for death, despite their learning, and certain themes recur with variations as befit each figure’s perceived persona and status, most notably the sins of pride and greed. In places Lydgate adds irony to the original French satire. For the pope Lydgate uses hyperbole to enhance the satire of the French poem. Omitting the mort’s general address to the living in the first four lines, he expands Death’s pseudo-reverential address in order to describe the pope as having sovereignty ‘liche as Petur [...] / Ouer the churche and states temporal’ (E:59-60; L:20

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‘Ovir the chirche most in especiall’). Whereas the French pope doubts the seemliness of his leading the dance, Lydgate’s pope instead happily believes himself fittest to do so as one who ‘sate yn erthe hyest yn my see’ (E:66; L:26). Lydgate’s ironic presentation of the cardinal is largely modelled on the French poem. The main emphasis is on the cardinal’s red hat and his ‘grete a-rai’ (E:93; L:53). It is doubtful that Lydgate intended to satirise the rich and powerful Cardinal Beaufort who, having been Chancellor under both Henry IV and Henry V, was at this time engaged in a power struggle with the duke of Gloucester for control over government in England. Perhaps to avoid any resemblance to the wealthy Beaufort, Lydgate replaced the lines ‘Vous auez vescu haultement / Et en honneur a grant deuis’ (You have lived in a high manner, and in honour to your great content) with a less pointed attack. The main themes amongst other targets for anti-clerical satire are pride and greed. Lydgate strengthens the contrast between the patriarch’s ‘humble chere’ when facing Death, and his rich cross, power and dignity that he is about to lose. The archbishop is likewise guilty of worldly vanity, pride and love of luxury, as his words indicate: ‘A-dewe my tresowr my pompe & pride al-so (E:166). The bishop is accused of putting treasure and worldly goods above heavenly concerns. He responds to Death’s ‘sodeyne tidinges’ along the same lines as his French counterpart, except for the line ‘Mi festes turned in to simple ferie’ (E:211). The idea that bad news can turn one’s feastdays (or church festivals) into ordinary weekdays is really rather clever in this episcopal context, but that joke is lost in the B version. The abbot was traditionally satirised for over-indulgence, so Lydgate rhymes a reference to his ‘brode hatte’ with the line ‘Grete is 3owre hede 3owr beli large & fatte’ (E:235; L:179). Death gleefully tells the abbot that he must dance ‘thow3 3e be nothing light’ (E:236; L:180) and that ‘Who that is fattest [...] / In his graue shal sonnest putrefie’ (E:239-40; L:183-84; see chapter 7). The abbot himself contrasts his life as a cloistered monk with his liberty and ‘grete habundaunce’ (E:245; L:189). The stereotypical monk of medieval satire (absent in the B version) is keen to escape the seclusion of his cloister walls and also loves good food, fine clothes and hunting. Responding to Death’s warning that he must give account ‘towchyng yowre laboure / How 3e haue spente hit in dede worde & thought’ (E:381-82), Lydgate’s monk admits that his labours have not all been exemplary. He expresses a belated hankering after the cloister as a place of contemplation, knowing himself himself to be guilty of many vices, ‘Liche as a fole dissolute and nyce’ (E:389). Medieval friars were known for their eloquence, as shown by Chaucer. Death reminds the friar minor of his graphic sermons about the horrors of death, ‘Al-be that folke take ther of none hede’ (E:565; L:389), which makes Lydgate’s ‘Cordelere’ seem less persuasive than Chaucer’s friar while admonishing those who fail to heed the same message in the Dance. Now himself the target of Death’s sermon, the friar acknowledges the vanity of strength, wealth and worldy wisdom. The concluding truisms of both stanzas well befit a preacher: ‘For dethe eche owre is present & redy’ and ‘Wise is that synner that dothe his lif a-mende’ (E:568, 576; L:392, 400). In contrast to the B version’s Canonicus Regularis, the secular canon (Decanus in B) lived in the outside world. He has to forego his comfortable income from prebends and recognises too late that his ‘benefices with many a personage’ (E:321; L:297 ‘My divers cures my riche personages’) now offer little comfort. The main theme is again greed, just as in the presentation of the parson whose verses Lydgate freely adapted from the French. His worldly ‘Sire Curate’ is a far cry from Chaucer’s idealised counterpart and certainly no mirror to others: he is wholly preoccupied with his tithes and ‘oblacioun’ (E:532), the offering made at the Holy Eucharist. Bidding

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farewell to his revenues, he resigns himself to giving final reckoning for the care of his flock in accordance with Death’s final truism, ‘And to eche laboure due is the salarie’ (E:536). In a break with medieval tradition, the parson is here unfavourably juxtaposed with the hard-working labourer, the hero of Langland’s poem.92 The astronomer’s celestial focus is contrasted with the earthly fate of Adam’s descendants, doomed because of ‘an appil rounde’ (E:288; L:376). Lydgate cannot resist showing off his own knowledge of astronomical calculation and ‘domefyinge’ (E:292; L:380), for which confused scribes substituted variant readings such as ‘demonstrynge’, ‘domyssesence’ and ‘dome seyng’.93 The physician was traditionally satirised as a quack or as a learned man too fond of gold, like Chaucer’s ‘Doctor of Physic’. Not all medieval doctors were frauds, however:94 the physician is presented as a man of science and a true healer, if helpless against death, in the French Danse, which also provided an apt truism, ‘Good leche is he that can hym self recure’ (E:424). Lydgate introduces a sour note by mentioning the physician’s desire for renown and the gold that he has won through his craft. Except for sharing these mercenary allusions absent in the French poem, the physician’s stanzas in the A and B versions are totally different: the variant B phrase ‘herbe nor roote / Nor no medicyne’ (L:478), which matches the French ‘herbe ne racine: / Nautre remede’, illustrates once again the complicated nature of the Dance text variations. For the man of law – addressed as ‘Sir aduocate’ in the A text and ‘sir Sergeant’ in B – Lydgate follows both the French Danse and Chaucer in using legal terminology to characterise a typical lawyer. His main incentive is lucre, which will not benefit him as he ‘mote come plete a-fore the hye Juge’ (E:466; L:338). The final truism fits the man of law well: ‘God quyte al men liche as thei deserue’ (E:480; L:352). Also keen on earthly possessions is the young clerk (absent in the B version), who differs from the stereotypical young eternal student satirised only gently by Chaucer. Death accuses him of vain ambitions to ‘haue risen vn-to hye degre / Of benefices or somme grete prebende’ (E:594-95), which indicates the sins of pride as well as avarice. Better prepared for death is the abstemious Carthusian, whose ‘chekes dede & pale’ (E:345; L:321) are contrasted with Death’s loathsome appearance. Like his French counterpart, Lydgate’s Carthusian calmly concedes victory to Death: he has long been dead to the world already. The hermit provides a fitting contemptus mundi finale as the last living victim in the Dance, although his juxtaposition with the clerk interrupts the clerical/lay alternation. His humble gratitude for God’s ‘grete habundaunce’ is praised in the third stanza labelled ‘Dethe a-3en to the Ermyte’ in the Ellesmere Manuscript (omitted in B). The infant might have been a more logical hierarchical choice to conclude the Danse, which is what we find in Morgan MS M.359 (see chapter 2, Fig. 9, and also chapter 5). Yet the unknown French poet must have preferred a pious conclusion, and Lydgate follows his example. Lydgate often refers to his characters’ appearance, such as the canon’s ‘Amys o[f] gris’ (E:325; L:301) or the archbishop’s posture, here interpreted as a sign of disdain (E:153-54; L:113-14). He also enjoys using (and mixing) metaphors, as in the bishop being ‘brow3t to lure’ to render account for his ‘prelacie’ (E:206-7; L:150-51), the lure being a device to recall hawks but also already a common metaphor.95 Some are less apt: the metaphor about the need to settle one’s debts and pay the host seems inappropriate for the archbishop, yet it is also found in the French poem.96 New is Lydgate’s reference to the Wheel of Fortune in Death’s words to the clerk, ‘Who clymbeth hyest somme-tyme shal dessende / Lete no man grucche a-3ens his fortune’ (E:597-98). The Wheel may also be implied in the patriarch’s recognition that ‘Hi[e] clymbyng vp [a f]alle hathe for his mede’ (E:133; L:93) and Death’s truism to the

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bishop ‘No wight is sure that clymbeth ouer hye’ (E:208; L:152) from the French line ‘Nest pas asseur qui trop hault monte’ – a lesson also for the reader. ƔThe lay male characters in Lydgate’s Dance of Death Like the French danse, Lydgate includes few working-class representatives other than the labourer; the ‘artifex’ in the B version is an exception. The theme’s adaptability to social change is evident in the larger number of trades presented in the Danse Macabre des Femmes, and far more so yet in the German Totentanz tradition. Social representation was to become much broader still in the post-medieval Ständebuch that was in many ways the secular successor of the danse.97 Lydgate’s allusions to characters’ appearance and attributes, such as the physician’s urine flask (E:417), may have been intended just as recognition factors. The emperor’s acceptance of a ‘simple shete [...] / To wrappe yn my bodi and visage’ (E:85-86 – my italics) raises the question whether the scheme in London might have depicted a recognisable emperor. However, there are no pointed references to support any such identification in the virtually identical A and B stanzas, which follow the French poem fairly closely (see also chapter 2). 11. The patriarch and the king in the Dance of Death mural of the early sixteenth century in the Guild Chapel at Stratford-uponAvon, watercolour reconstruction painted by William Puddephat when the mural was uncovered in 1955. Compare also Marchant’s figures of the patriarch and the king (in separate woodcuts) in Appendix 1 and the overall view in chapter 1, fig. 6.

The A and B verses for the king retain the French king’s complaint about the dance being ‘sauage’ and the line ‘For [w]e shalle al to dede asshes turne’ (E:120; L:112). If the interpretation of these French verses in chapter 2 is correct, it raises the question whether Lydgate grasped the political meaning within the overall didactic context. Yet in England his stanzas about the downfall of a king ‘moste worthi of renown’ (E:105; L:97) would have applied very well to the late Henry V, especially in combination with the references in the second stanza of the ‘Verba translatoris’ to ‘conquerowres’ who are struck down ‘When thei schyne moste in felicite’ (E:11) and the addition of the named character of ‘Maister Jon Rikelle some tyme tregetowre / of nobille harry’ (see below).98 There is no firm proof to support suggestions of a cryptoportrait in the Pardon Churchyard scheme, although such imagery was sometimes altered or appropriated by later kings.99 Yet there is the evidence of the

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Dance of Death mural in Stratford-upon-Avon for comparison. When the remains of this scheme were exposed in 1955 (Fig. 11), the king was found to wear a mantle decorated with the English royal device of three lions passant gardant. Yet even if they took their inspiration from the Pardon Churchyard scheme, the Stratford artists appear to have used Marchant’s woodcuts as their model, albeit that they adapted the king’s mantle (see Appendix 1); the heraldry may – yet need not – imply that this figure was intended to be a cryptoportrait of the then reigning monarch, Henry VII.100 With slightly revised verses Lydgate’s constable becomes a ‘Riht myhty prynce’ (L:129) in the B version, although one manuscript labels him ‘duke’.101 A new ubi sunt comparison with ‘worthy Arthour of prowes ful notable / With al his knyhtes [of] the rounde table’ (L:132-33) is added to the original mention of Charlemagne. The constable’s line about his ambition to ‘brynge folke vn-to subieccioun’ receives a new target of ‘Rebellis’ (E:147; L:139) – perhaps a topical allusion? Less martial is Lydgate’s baron or knight, who shares the French chevalier’s interest in dancing and flirting ‘with ladies and wymmen hye of [n]ame’ (E:180) as well as in trumpets and clarions, i.e. the music of battle, hunting and action. Yet the banter about his womanising is changed in the B version to a pursuit of power and status. Legal jargon is used to satirise the bailiff, just as it is for the man of law. Death summons him ‘to a newe assise / Extorcions & wronges to redresse’ (E:267-68), but ironically it is for his own venality that the bailiff must give account. The truism that no appeal avails against death fits his profession. Pride and anger are the typical sins of the sergeant; his mace in Marchant’s woodcut is also mentioned by Lydgate and the French poet. Death warns him to ‘make no defence ne no rebellioun’ (E:362; L:402) because nothing avails even the strongest champion. The indignant sergeant cannot escape: Death has arrested him, ‘the kynges chosen officere’ (E:370; L:410). Money and worldly goods are the theme in the stanzas for the burgher, the merchant and the usurer, which closely follow the French poem; the B version has only the merchant. The burgher is told that his wealth will not save him; it will merely pass to another. His regret at having to leave ‘Howses rentes tresoure & substauns’ anticipates the truism ‘And w[h]o moste hathe [l]othest dieth euer’ (E:307, 312). The well-travelled merchant is satirised because of his greed;102 Death’s closing words complement those for the burgher, ‘No[ne] more coueite than thei that haue ynow’ (E:336; L:488). A stereotypical villain in medieval culture, the usurer only now recognises his sins to which he had previously been blind; an image also used in the truism ‘Somme haue feyre y3en that seen neuer a dele’ (E:408). His greed is underlined by a poor man to whom he hands money as Death pulls him away – but only as a loan, the French recipient explains to the reader; Lydgate’s third stanza instead resembles a sermon about the differences between rich and poor. Though a stock character in the danse, the labourer is an exception in being both a rural figure and a lowly worker. Despite the consolation that death will release him from this false world – for Death shows him some sympathy – the labourer would rather live his life of toil and foul weather. Lydgate deviates from the French text in replacing the French vineyards with the plough and other agricultural labour. Another exception because of his age is the child (see chapter 5): an English iconographical variation on the infant in his cradle of French tradition is the bare-legged young child in Tottel’s 1554 woodcut (see Introduction, figs 12-13, and chapter 2, figs 7 and 9). Lydgate’s A text softens the French criticism of the minstrel for entertaining fools with his music; he may be able to ‘note & pipe’, but he must join a different dance. The theme of the minstrel’s own stanza in the A version is his dismay at this new dance with its ‘dredful fotyng’ and varying measures that Death forces him to

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join. The B verses for the Mimus read and scan totally differently, however, and may not be by Lydgate; it is impossible to find any reasons for this ‘revision’. ƔFigures of youth: the squire, the amoureux and the amorous gentlewoman By making the amoureux an amorous squire, Lydgate introduced an anomaly: the poem already contains a squire. The virtually identical A and B versions are closely modelled on the French poem. Like his counterpart in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the squire (‘Miles & Armiger’ in B) is ‘fresh’ and adept at dancing, fighting and horsemanship. Reluctantly he bids adieu to mirth, solace, beauty, and to ‘my ladyes somme-tyme so fressh of face’ (E:228; L:252), which shows him to be young: lust was held to be a sin of youth whereas greed typifies the old. His final lines are a reminder to heed one’s soul before it is too late, ‘For al shal rote & no man wote what tyme’ ( (E:232; L:256). By comparison, the figure of the amoureux is as much about age as about rank: Marchant’s woodcut shows him far more elegantly dressed than the escuier, albeit in late-fifteenth-century style like most of Marchant’s figures. He epitomises youth, or Adolescentia in the Ages of Man tradition. If lust was regarded as a typical sin of youth, so was vanity.103 Lydgate uses the language of courtly love for his ‘amerous Squyere’, who is gentle, fresh, young, ‘flowryng in 3owre grene age’, lusty, ‘fre of herte and eke desyrous’ (E:433-35). Not everything is positive: green may be the colour of Spring, youth and vigour, but in comparisons with the transitory leaf it could also connote inconstancy.104 The tone changes completely after the line ‘Plesaunt of porte of loke & [of] visage’ (E:437) when the squire is reminded that everything shall be turned into dead ashes; after all, beauty is ‘but a feynte ymage’ (E:439). The squire answers with an ‘Allas allas’ and a string of adieux – seven of his eight lines begin with A – to the ‘lusti fressh floure’ of youth, to the vainglory of beauty and pride, to all service to Cupid, and to his ladies ‘so fresshe so wel be-seyne’ (i.e. dressed, adorned). Nothing can resist death; not even youth or beauty.

12. The amoureux (with a flower – inset) in the unfinished fifteenth-century Dance Macabre fresco in the choir of the abbey church of St Robert, La ChaiseDieu (Auvergne).

The French poem often alludes to attributes that the mural would also have shown, so what distinguishes the amoureux besides youth and elegant attire? He bids adieu to his ‘amourettes’, ‘chapeaux bouques fleuretes’, ‘amans: et puceletes’, but

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Marchant’s woodcut shows him with only a stylish hat and attire. Yet the amoureux in the Danse Macabre fresco at La Chaise-Dieu (Auvergne) has a flower as his attribute (Fig. 12): a token not just of ephemeral youth and life, but also of courtship. The age of courtship was Adolescentia, its equivalent in the medieval calendar being the month of May.105 The Ages of Man is usually an all-male scheme in medieval art, yet in the fourteenth-century encyclopaedia Omne Bonum the entry for Adolescentia shows a woman offering a mirror to a young man, whose sword hangs rather suggestively between his legs (Fig. 13); the accompanying text confirms Adolescentia as the Age of ‘heat’ that needs to be restrained.106 In an illuminated diagram of the Ages of Man in a Bavarian manuscript of c.1330-40, Adolescentia is represented by a young man with a flower embracing a woman (Fig. 14).107 A Flemish miniature of c.1480 depicting The Three Living and the Three Dead also includes a female companion as a love interest for one of the three stereotypical young male hunters (Fig. 15). 13. (Far left) The Age of Adolescentia represented by a young noble couple in the fourteenth-century encyclopaedia Omne Bonum (BL MS Royal 6 E. vi, fol. 58v). 14. (Left) Adolescentia represented by a romantic couple, c.1330-40, from a diagram on a single Bavarian manuscript leaf illustrating the five Ages of Man according to Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ De Proprietatibus Rerum (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm. 19414, fol. 180r). 15. (Right) The Three Living and the Three Dead, miniature in a Flemish book of hours of c.1480 (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 B 14, fol. 227v): the knight on the white horse has a female companion.

16. (Below left) The amoureux and his female companion(?), detail from a danse macabre border decoration in a Parisian book of hours of c.1430 (Paris, BNF ms. Rothschild 2535, fol. 108v): see also chapter 2, fig. 7.

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So could there have been a female companion to the amoureux in the mural that Lydgate saw at Les Innocents in 1426? The near-contemporary danse macabre marginalia in BnF ms. Rothschild 2535 feature another elegantly dressed couple who are difficult to interpret otherwise (Fig. 16; see also chapter 2). Moreover, there is the precedent of the poor man as an added foil to the usurer; although no copy of the French poem contains an additional stanza for a woman, it is not impossible that she was included in the mural as a mere attribute without her own verses. Further support for this hypothesis may lie in Lydgate’s Dance where the amorous squire is succeeded by a ‘gentilwoman amerous’ ‘of 3eres 3onge & grene’ (E:449; L:353). Death’s stanza overflows with the ubi sunt references to beautiful heroines long dead – Polyxena, Penelope, Helen of Troy – that we find in other poems of the period, including Lydgate’s. There is also the courtly love element in the word ‘daunger’ and in the gentlewoman’s ‘straungenesse’ (E:454-55; L:358-59). Misogyny colours her lament about the loss of her beauty: the lines ‘For yn my 3owthe this was myn entente / To my seruyce many a man to a lured’ (E:461-62; L:365-66) carry more than a hint of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. Even without an amoureuse in the Paris mural, Lydgate could have found inspiration elsewhere to include female figures, especially in The Canterbury Tales. There is the juxtaposition of the nobilis and nobilissa in the Latin Totentanz, but neither is presented according to courtly love conventions and it is debatable when the Totentanz tradition emerged.108 The A and B verses for the gentlewoman are virtually identical and Lydgate’s authorship is not in question. Yet as part of the ‘revision’ the stanzas for the amorous squire were omitted from the B text, probably because they were considered superfluous when there was already a squire earlier in the poem. ƔThe additional characters in Lydgate’s Dance of Death Besides the amorous gentlewoman, Lydgate added four more new characters to his original Dance. Like the bailiff and the man of law, the juror is another corrupt official: he is involved in the valuation of land and property.109 Legal terminology is again used to satirise this character, who is unlikely to acquit himself before the ultimate judge. A medieval hate figure, especially among the poor, the juror himself admits that ‘Of my dethe many a man is glad’ (E:496; L:432). The second new male character is the ‘tregetour’ (court juggler or magician), who is also the only named character in the Dance: ‘Maister Jon Rikelle some tyme tregetowre / Of nobille harry kynge of Ingelonde / And of Fraunce the myghti Conquerowre’ (E:513-15), i.e. a servant of the late Henry V. The words and metaphors used in the poem befit the ‘tregetour’, whose profession appears to involve not only ‘legerdemeyn’ but also ‘maugic natural’ and astrology. Yet sleights of hand will not help him: Death is ‘not deceyued be noon illusiouns’ (E:520). No historical figure of this name has yet been found in the royal records, though Rikil or Rikhill was a familiar London surname.110 Yet there are no known precedents for such a named character in the European danse macabre tradition at this time (although Chaucer’s host Harry Bailey is an obvious literary precedent) and it seems likely that Lydgate’s contemporaries were meant to know this figure. The introduction of the late king’s tregetour may well support the idea of allusions to Henry V earlier in the poem. The ‘lady of great estate’ is censured for aloofness (‘grete straungenesse’) and the usual female vanities, much like the gentlewoman. Her beauty, rich array and dalliance with different men will no longer help her, for she must learn the ‘foting’ of Death’s dance. The lady (or ‘Princesse’) recognises that queen, countess nor duchess

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is safe: Death is impervious to their charms and beauty is ephemeral. The lady is thus very much a misogynistic stereotype with few original traits. The gentle-born abbess also enjoys a pampered lifestyle, as evident from her rich apparel – her ‘mantels furred large & wide’ and ‘wimple passyng of grete richesse’ – and even her ‘beddes softe’ (E:250-52; L:194-96). Inevitably this has called forth comparisons with Chaucer’s Prioress.111 With mock courtesy Death offers to guide her to the dance, while the abbess reminisces about her singing, her ‘varnished’ round cheeks, and her (unlicensed?) freedom as suggested by the line ‘Ungirte ful ofte to walke atte large’ (E:262). The abbess thus presents herself as less than modest: the word ‘ungirte’ may even suggest a girdle as a symbol of chastity.112 Yet this satirical stanza ends on an oddly nautical note with the line ‘Who hath no ship mote rowe yn bote or barge’ (E:264), which does not appear in the B stanza. Instead, all but the first two lines are revised in favour of a more serious tone as the abbess piously accepts that ‘This pilgrymage to every man is dewe’ (L:205), which does not really rhyme with her frivolous character in the first stanza. The line that she ‘must his [i.e. Death’s] trace sewe’ may have been copied from the discarded lady of great estate for re-use in the revamped abbess’s B stanza (L:204; E:198). The nun (‘monialis’) is one of eight new figures to appear only in the B version. She is defined by her nun’s apparel: ‘barbid & claad in clothis blaake’ (L:305), and wearing the mantle and the ring with which she chastely espoused Christ.113 The irony is that whereas nuns are not supposed to dance, she can no more decline Death’s invitation than can any other ‘maide widewe nor wiff’ (L:310): it is the course of nature. In reply, the nun counsels everyone to be prepared ‘a-geyn this fel batayle’ as ‘Vertu is sewrer than othir plate or maile’ (L:316-17) – two of several military metaphors ill befitting a nun. The stanza ends with the devout advice ‘With the hand of almesse to love god & drede’ (L:320), but the awkward metre throughout both stanzas gives reason to doubt Lydgate’s authorship. The B stanzas for the empress were added by a different hand in at least two A version copies, including Trinity College Cambridge MS R.3.21 (see above), which suggests that some early readers considered them part of Lydgate’s poem.114 Death offers himself as the empress’s dancing partner: ‘Have no disdeyn with me for to daunce’ (L:66). However, she must relinquish her riches, fresh attires, clothes of gold, ‘strange countenaunce’ and other such vanities. The empress bemoans all transitory pleasures in repeated phrases of ‘what availeth hih blood or Ientylnesse’ (L:74-76). Woolf suspected these verses to have been derived from some lost French analogue, especially because of the variation on the Que vaut biautez motif, but that would most likely have been another form of vanitas poem rather than a danse macabre proper.115 A clever detail is Lydgate’s line ‘Deth seith chek-mat to al sich veyn noblesse’ (L:77) – chess was a traditional aristocratic pastime. The same metaphor is also used in the amorous gentlewoman’s stanza (E:459; L:363) and elsewhere in Lydgate’s work. So why is there an empress and not a queen? After all, the saved pope, emperor and king in the Chester Last Judgement (play XXIV) have the ‘Regina Salvata’ and ‘Regina Damnata’ as their female counterparts (see chapter 4). The empress is absent from the Danse Macabre des Femmes where the queen occupies the highest position, although in the German Totentanz her presence is understandable. Empress (if uncrowned) in this period was Sigismund’s second wife Barbara of Cilli (1392-1451), an intelligent and ambitious woman who was reviled by contemporaries.116 Yet the empress is not a logical choice for Lydgate who could have included a queen instead, unless he wished to avoid any resemblance to a living queen, i.e. Henry V’s young widow Catherine of Valois (1401-37); she secretly married Owen Tudor around this

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time. (Lydgate probably knew Catherine personally.)117 James Clark attributed the absence of a queen in the Dance to the fact that Henry VI became engaged only in 1444, thereby ignoring the possibility that the omission may have been deliberate and that satirising a token empress would have been safer.118 Apart from the nun and the abbess’s pious lines in the B version, the female characters in Lydgate’s Dance are fairly stereotypical representations of womanhood at its most frivolous. It is hard to detect any real sympathy or engagement, but then the presentation of women veers between the courtly ideal and misogyny throughout Lydgate’s oeuvre.119 Pearsall summed up the poet as someone who ‘had neither the desire, nor the incentive, nor the creative power to make things new’.120 Yet Lydgate introduced at least some new characters, for they cannot all be explained away as later interpolations. He added embellishments in his massive verse adaptation The Fall of Princes as well, even if these were usually based on additional sources and not always improvements.121 It is impossible to determine what inspired him to include at least some token females in his Dance: whether any (hypothetical) image of a woman in the mural at Les Innocents, or the precedent of Chaucer’s Prioress and Wife of Bath in the predominantly male Canterbury Tales, or even an awareness of female figures in the Latin-German Totentanz tradition (if any such version was available to him). Whatever his inspiration, Lydgate did introduce a new female element in his Dance of Death. The question of authorship also applies to the six male characters found only in the B version. The verses for the erring iudex or Lord Justice are uninspired and scan so very differently that they are unlikely to be by Lydgate. The mayor’s stanzas also contain some questionable metre, but with more inventive satire of the mayor who has ‘gouernaunce / Bi pollicie to rewle this cite’ (L:257-58). Guilty of pride and greed, the mayor learns that neither wealth nor ‘force of officeres’ can help him (L:264). Satire combines with doubtful metre in the stanzas for the venal famulus (‘Seruant or officer’), who is told not to fear the dance if he has done justice to rich and poor alike and ‘Fled extorcioun with al thy myht’ (L:451). This is evidently not the case and the famulus can only warn others: ‘In office lat no man doon outrage’ (L:462). More plausibly Lydgate’s in style are the verses of the doctor of canon and civil law. Instead of pointed satire they contain a mix of metaphors, however, such as the appropriately legal line ‘No man of his liff hath charter nor seele’ (L:235) and rather incongruous comparisons with an ‘amorously floorsshyng’ flower bitten by frost and Death’s message leaving all life in the shade. Death’s stanza to the regular canon and the latter’s pious response suggest that this canon is indeed humble and chaste; there is no hint of the greed that typifies his secular counterpart.122 Yet the stanzas for the artificer are suspect because of both their metre and a curious mix of metaphors, such as the legal truism ‘Eche man mote passe whan deth settith assise’ (L:504) and the martial references to Death piercing shields, plate and mail. Unusual here is also the presentation of Death as female: ‘She pershith sheeldis she pershith plate & maile / Ageyns her strok [...] What that hir list’ (L:509-11). As the above outline will have shown, the traditional assumption that Lydgate’s original ‘A version’ was revised to make a ‘B version’ is too simplistic. More analysis is required to determine which stanzas are definitely Lydgate’s: it is possible that some were added later by Lydgate himself, but others may have been either created or ‘revised’ by different writers. One detail is worth noting: whereas several A and B stanzas open with the summons ‘Come’, Death’s command ‘Geve me 3owre honde’ to the Carthusian recurs (with variations) only in four of the new B stanzas.123

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Conclusion Lydgate’s Dance of Death is more than merely a translation of the French Danse Macabre poem: it may follow its model very closely in places, but it is an adaptation as well as a re-interpretation. We may not know the reasons why Lydgate chose to translate the Danse Macabre poem that he saw in the newly created mural in Paris, or who supported him in this undertaking. If he was aware of any historical or political allusions in the French scheme, he may have interpreted the poem initially as a combination of a moralising lesson about death and estates satire in the tradition of The Canterbury Tales, albeit that he maintained the French preponderance of clerical figures with hardly any trades or craft representatives. Nonetheless, in Henry V’s former ‘tregetour’, ‘Maister Jon Rikelle’, Lydgate appears to have introduced at least one new contemporary character, just as the second stanza about ‘conquerowres’ being cast down when in their prime and at the height of their felicity and power reads very much like an epitaph for Henry V. This idea needs further investigation, but it would tie in well with the hypothesis in chapter 2 about a cryptoportrait in the Danse Macabre mural in Paris. A similar cryptoportrait of the late lamented Henry V in the London scheme would help explain the rapid dissemination of the Dance in England. The addition of new characters is one of the differences between the French poem and Lydgate’s Dance. Chaucer’s Prioress and Wife of Bath may have been a factor in the introduction of women in Lydgate’s Dance, regardless of whether or not the amoureux at Les Innocents had a female companion. Yet we cannot rule out the possibility that there were other versions of the danse in circulation: the mural that Lydgate claimed as his inspiration was evidently a later development of an earlier prototype. No date can be assigned to the Latin-German Totentanz tradition, but one of the features it has in common with Lydgate’s Dance is the inclusion of female characters, especially the figure of the empress in the so-called B version. The ‘revision’ of Lydgate’s Dance remains a problem. The traditional assumption that the original text was specifically adapted to suit John Carpenter’s painted scheme in Pardon Churchyard cannot be substantiated or even sustained. There is no recorded date for Carpenter’s commission nor any evidence that can tell us on which version of the Dance his scheme was based. While it remains possible that a revised version of the so-called A text was used in the Pardon Churchyard paintings, the B version contains too many suspect lines to be regarded in its entirety as a revision by Lydgate. Instead some stanzas appear to have been altered or added by later writers. It is doubtful that Carpenter’s scheme could have incorporated stanzas not by Lydgate himself: references to the Dance at ‘Powlis’ in his poem Tyed with a Lyne and in The Prohemy suggest that Lydgate was personally involved in the project. Surviving manuscripts and contemporary references to the Dance confirm a wider familiarity of the poem, or perhaps with the theme as it was presented in Pardon Churchyard. It is unfortunate that we have lost the visual context of Lydgate’s poem in Carpenter’s scheme, regardless of whether the Dance was written with a pictorial scheme in mind.124 It is telling that the danse macabre became known across England as the ‘Dance of Paul’s’ so soon after Carpenter’s scheme, as the Bristol will of William Wytteney indicates in the late 1440s. Just as in Paris, it was the combination of text and images – yet perhaps also the topical allusions to each nation’s deceased monarch – that made the theme famous. The rapid spread of the theme across the country and into different media will be discussed further in the next chapters. --oo0oo--

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NOTES 1

O. Timofeeva, ‘Word be worde – andgit of andgite: A Study of the Medieval Rhetorical Formula’, in R.W. McConchie, O. Timofeeva, H. Tissari and T. Säily (eds), Selected Proceedings of the 2005 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX) (Somerville, MA, 2006), pp. 135-42, traces the convention via King Alfred back to late Antiquity. 2 See, for example, L. Scanlon and J. Simpson (eds), John Lydgate. Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England (Notre Dame, 2006), and L.H. Cooper, and A. Denny-Brown (eds), Lydgate Matters. Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century (New York/Basingstoke, 2008). 3 An exception is J. Simpson, ‘Bulldozing the Middle Ages: The Case of “John Lydgate”’, New Medieval Literatures, 4 (2001), pp. 213-42, while there is an interesting but flawed reading of Lydgate’s B version in A. Appleford, ‘The Dance of Death in London: John Carpenter, John Lydgate, and the Daunce of Poulys’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 38:2 (2008), pp. 285-314: see also the discussion below. 4 D. Pearsall, John Lydgate (1371-1449): A Bio-bibliography, English Literary Studies Monograph Series, 71 (Victoria, 1997), with a table of dates (pp. 50-52) and documents relating to Lydgate (Appendix); also W.F. Schirmer, John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century (1952, transl. London, 1961), chapter 2 on the monastery of Bury. 5 In a surviving letter the Prince of Wales asks the abbot and chapter of the Bury monastery to allow ‘J.L.’ (presumably John Lydgate) to continue his studies at Oxford on the recommendation of ‘R.C.’ (i.e. Richard Courteney, Chancellor of Oxford). Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, p. 15 and Appendix nr. 8. 6 Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, pp. 26-27. Lydgate himself claimed that he first began The Title and Pedigree of Henry VI in ‘The monyth of Iuyll twenty daies comen, / and eight ouere’ when ‘Henry the Sext, of age ny fyve yere ren’: see H.N. MacCracken and M. Sherwood (eds), The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, part II, Secular Poems, EETS, o.s. 192 (London, 1934), no. 28, ll. 290-91 and 30. 7 Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, p. 26, quoting a rubric copied in BL MS Harley 7333. Shirley’s rubrics provide important early evidence on Lydgate but their reliability has been questioned. M. Connolly, John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England (Aldershot, 1998), esp. pp. 11, 14-23, 52-54, claims that Shirley had been previously in the service of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and that he was certainly with his lord in France in early 1427 (p. 23), being sent back to London from Paris on 4 February but once again back in France in April 1427. If this is correct, Shirley may have met Lydgate or been aware of how Lydgate was commissioned to write the poem. 8 Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, p. 27; F.J. Furnivall and K. Locock (eds), Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, EETS, e.s., 77, 83, 92 (London, 1899, 190, 1904). For earlier doubts about Lydgate’s authorship of the English Pilgrimage, see K. Walls, ‘Did Lydgate Translate the “Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine”?’, Notes and Queries, 222 (1977), pp. 103-5, and R.F. Green, ‘Lydgate and Deguileville Once More’, Notes and Queries, 223 (1978), pp. 105-6. 9 L.A. Ebin, John Lydgate (Boston, 1985), p. 2, claimed: ‘From 1426 to 1429, Lydgate lived in Paris, in the train of the duke of Bedford’. Actually Bedford was in England from late December 1426 through to March 1427. Schirmer, Lydgate, p. 91, believed that Lydgate remained in Paris ‘presumably until Henry’s coronation in 1429’. Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, p. 27, assumed that Lydgate left Paris shortly after being commissioned by the earl of Salisbury to translate the Pèlerinage, but also hinted at an alternative scenario of the Dance of Death being originally a commission from John Carpenter, which would mean that Lydgate was still in Paris in 1430. See also the discussion of Carpenter’s commission below. It should be noted that this stay in Paris coincides with Lydgate’s priorate of the small Benedictine priory of Hatfield Regis (or Hatfield Broad Oak) in Essex, which began in 1423 and officially ended on 8 April 1434 with a letter of release permitting him to return to Bury, although in reality he may have relinquished the role of prior much earlier. See Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, pp. 2425 and Appendix nr. 12. 10 F. Warren (ed.), The Dance of Death, edited from MSS. Ellesmere 26/A.13 and B.M. Lansdowne 699, collated with the other extant MSS., EETS, o.s. 181 (London, 1931, repr. 2000), p. 110, notes that the versions in Trinity College Cambridge MS R.3.21 and Tottel’s edition speak of just one French clerk. 11 J. Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution, The Oxford English Literary History, 2, 1350-1547 (Oxford, 2002), p. 64, ‘Most English writing, secular or religious, of the period 1350-1550 is translation’. On Lydgate’s translation of the French danse macabre poem, see J.H.M. Taylor, ‘Translation as Reception: La Danse Macabré’, in K. Pratt (ed.), Shifts and Transpositions in Medieval Narrative: A Festschrift for Dr. Elspeth Kennedy (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 181-92. 12 For example, H. Bergen (ed.), Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, part 1, EETS, e.s. 121 (London, 1924), p. xxi: ‘A writer who usually contrives to spoil even his most felicitous passages before he has done with

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them, who systematically pads out his lines with stock phrases and rhyme-tags, and pours out unending streams of verse during apparently the whole of a very long life, cannot well be taken seriously as one of the great poets’. For Lydgate’s ‘aureate’ diction – a term coined by the poet himself – see J. NortonSmith, John Lydgate: Poems (Oxford, 1966), pp. 192-95. 13 Whilst expressing praise for Lydgate, John Skelton (c.1460-1529) remarked in his poem Philip Sparrow (ll. 811-12) that ‘some men fynde a faute, / And say he wryteth to haute’. See D. Pearsall, John Lydgate (London, 1970), pp. 2-3. 14 Pearsall, Lydgate, pp. 8, 11, 14, admits that it cannot be denied that ‘Lydgate is by nature longwinded’, ‘incurably didactic’, ‘prolific, prolix and dull’, but nonetheless important and ‘perfectly representative of the Middle Ages’ – thereby contradicting those who have tried to present Lydgate as a Renaissance poet. Compare A. Renoir, The Poetry of John Lydgate (London, 1967), p. 143, but also the views in Simpson, Reform, esp. pp. 46-50, 67. There is a partial defence of Lydgate’s ‘so-called faulty construction’ in P. Hardman, ‘Lydgate’s Uneasy Syntax’, in Scanlon and Simpson, John Lydgate., pp. 12-35, while the title Lydgate Matters for the edited volume by Cooper and Denny-Brown is a deliberate pun (see the editors’ Introduction, esp. p. 1). 15 Pearsall’s only article specifically devoted to the poem is ‘Signs of Life in Lydgate’s Danse Macabre’, in J. Hogg (ed.), Zeit, Tod und Ewigkeit in der Renaissance Literatur, 3, Analecta Cartusiana, 117 (Salzburg, 1987), pp. 58-71. No mention of the poem whatsoever is made in Renoir, Poetry. The EETS published an unaltered reprint of Warren’s edition in 2000. Another edition of the poem is found in E.P. Hammond, (ed.), English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (1927, repr. New York, 1965), pp. 131-42, with an introduction on pp. 124-30. 16 Pearsall, Lydgate, p. 178. 17 R. Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), pp. 350-51; passing mention of the inclusion of ‘Lydgate’s own additions to the French, particularly the women’ is made in Pearsall, Lydgate, p. 178. 18 Pearsall, Lydgate, p. 18. 19 Pearsall, Lydgate, p. 177. 20 Pearsall, ‘Signs of Life’, p. 63. The prosodic device of ending an octave with a proverb, which Lydgate adopted from the Danse Macabre poem, was a popular convention in French poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Mostly either biblical in origin or derived from classical as well as patristic texts, these proverbs were intended to add authority to the texts in which they were cited. See J.H.M. Taylor, ‘Poésie et prédication. La fonction du discours proverbial dans la Danse macabre’, Medioevo Romanzo, 14 (1989), pp. 215-26. 21 Pearsall, Lydgate, pp. 177-78; repeated almost literally in Pearsall, ‘Signs of Life’, p. 63. 22 Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, Table of Dates, p. 51: ‘1430 Danse Macabre redone for John Carpenter’. 23 Like other B manuscript versions, Leiden University Library MS Vossius C.G.Q. 9 misses the translator’s stanzas, which is thus not the ‘remarkable hiatus’ that it was claimed to be in J.A. van Dorsten, ‘The Leyden “Lydgate Manuscript”’, Scriptorium, 14 (1960), pp. 315-25, at p. 318 and 322. Van Dorsten’s article contains a useful discussion of this later fifteenth-century manuscript, its peculiar foliation and its overall contents. 24 Pearsall, ‘Signs of Life’, pp. 62-63. Neither in this essay nor in other discussions of the poem does Pearsall indicate which added stanzas in the B version he considers to be not by Lydgate. M.C. Seymour, ‘Some Lydgate Manuscripts: Lives of SS. Edmund and Fremund and Dance Macabre’, Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions, 5:4 (1985), pp. 10-24, at p. 22, claims that the additions of the Juror and the Abbess are ‘not necessarily of his composition’. 25 For example, as pointed out to me by Fr. Jerome Bertram, the Latin Totentanz has an aabb rhyme scheme throughout, except in the verses of the empress, the count and the cook where we find abab (see Appendix 6). On the concept of variance, see B. Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant. A Critical History of Philology (1989, transl., Baltimore/London, 1999). 26 Warren, Dance of Death, pp. xxiv-xxxi. Warren reordered the characters in the Ellesmere Manuscript for her edition. 27 Warren, Dance of Death, p. xxx. 28 Hammond, English Verse, p. 124. Hammond herself edited the MS Selden Supra 53 version. 29 Seymour, ‘Some Lydgate Manuscripts’, p. 22; Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, pp. 68-69, added a onestanza excerpt in Cambridge (MA), Harvard University, Houghton Library MS English 752 (fol. 44) of Lydgate’s Troy Book, dated c.1475-1500, as well as the early printed version in Fakes’ c.1521 Horae Beate Marie Virginis (only 20 stanzas) and Tottel’s inclusion of the poem in his 1554 edition of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (see below).

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Seymour, ‘Some Lydgate Manuscripts’, p. 23. Seymour’s statement that the order of the first ten characters is altered in sub-group D is demonstrably incorrect. 31 Warren, Dance of Death, p. xxiv and n. 3, dated her twelve manuscript copies to the mid to late fifteenth century, with the exception of BL MS Cotton Vespasian A. xxv. Seymour, ‘Some Lydgate Manuscripts’, p. 22, dated the latter as c.1555 and the majority as ‘c.1450 unless otherwise dated’, but two are given an earlier date of c.1430 (Oxford, Bodleian MS Selden Supra 53) and c.1435 (Oxford, Bodleian MS Bodley 686). Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, pp. 68-69, assigns wider dates of 1430-60 to both these manuscripts as well as to Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud 735, and to Yale University Library (Beinecke) MS 493. 32 A. Gillespie, Print Culture and the Medieval Author. Chaucer, Lydgate, and Their Books 1473-1557 (Oxford, 2006), p. 222-23. 33 Hammond, English Verse, p. 125. 34 Woolf, English Religious Lyric, p. 353. 35 Warren, Dance of Death, p. 108; Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, p. 69; Gillespie, Print Culture, p. 89. The only detailed study to date is H.S. Herbrüggen, ‘Ein frühes liturgisches Beispiel für den englischen Totentanz: ‘Hore beate marie virginis ad vsum ... Sarnj’, Paris (1521?)’, in S. Füssel and J. Knape (eds), Poesis et Pictura. Studien zum Verhältnis von Text und Bild in Handschriften und alten Drucken. Festschrift für Dieter Wuttke zum 60. Geburtstag (Baden-Baden, 1989), pp. 235-53. 36 Herbrüggen, ‘Ein frühes liturgisches Beispiel’, p. 238. Fakes’ device and name on the title-page supplement the publication details in the colophon. 37 Trinity College Cambridge MS R.3.21 and Tottel’s edition read ‘or force of’. As further illustration of textual complications, in both the Ellesmere and Lansdowne versions Death warns the cardinal that he must leave behind his great array, whereas the Fakes/Bignon text instead reads ‘grete royalte’, which is also the variant reading in the much later MS Vespasian A. xxv. 38 Herbrüggen, ‘Ein frühes liturgisches Beispiel’. 39 Linguistic confusion was one of the problems that marred the production in France of early printed books for the English market. Amongst early books that failed to pass muster is the initial translation into English of the Calendrier des Bergers. The prologue in the Kalender of Shepardes published by Wyllyam Powell in 1556 (London, Lambeth Palace Library 1556.07) explains that ‘Thys boke [...] was fyrst corruptly prynted in fraunce and after that at the coste and charges of Rycharde Pynson, newly translated and reprynted, although not so faythfully as the origynall copy requyred’. 40 Herbrüggen also discussed what he claimed to be a rudimentary English danse macabre of eight stanzas under the heading ‘How every estate shulde order them in their degre’ in Richard Pynson’s 1518 edition of the Kalender of Shepardes, but Death is absent in these verses that have nothing directly in common with Lydgate’s Dance of Death. See H.S. Herbrüggen, ‘Der Schäfer-Kalender. Zur unbeachteten Rolle des Kalendrier des bergiers als Übermittler des Danse macabre in die englische Literatur’, in M. von Arnim (ed.), Festschrift Otto Schäfer zum 75. Geburtstag am 29. Juni 1987 (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 237-88. 41 Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 177. 42 Schirmer, Lydgate, p. 127, n. 1, repeats the persistent but false claim that the earliest known danse macabre scheme was painted in Klingenthal, Basel, in 1312, which is based on a misreading of the date of 1512 that commemorated some minor repainting work carried out on the mural. See R. Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes: die mittelalterlichen Totentänze und ihr Nachleben (Berne/Munich, 1980), pp. 188-89; also E.C. Williams, ‘The Dance of Death in Painting and Sculpture in the Middle Ages’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd ser., 1 (1937), pp. 229-57, at p. 249. The date of 1312 for the Klingenthal mural was also mentioned by Warren, Dance of Death, p. 97, and perpetuated in R.H. Bowers, ‘Iconography in Lydgate’s “Dance of Death”’, Southern Folklore Quarterly, 12 (1948), pp. 111-28, at p. 112. Schirmer’s claim, p. 127, n. 1, that the second scheme in Münden dates from 1383, probably refers to a painted panel at Minden (Westphalia) that had already been established by W. Seelmann in the 1890s to be a single vanitas figure and not a full danse macabre (Warren, Appendix II, p. 97). The Minden scheme was also mentioned in F. Douce, The Dance of Death Exhibited in Elegant Engravings on Wood, etc. (1833, repr. London, 1858), p. 30, but dismissed as not a true danse macabre in Mâle, Religious Art, pp. 337-38. 43 Schirmer, Lydgate, p. 127. Stow’s evidence will be discussed below. 44 Schirmer, Lydgate, p. 128, mentions Lydgate’s Legend of St George illustrating the paintings in the guildhall of the London armourers, his satire Bycorne and Chichevache, his Pedigree poem, the lines on the Kings of England and other ‘lengthy invocative poems’, such as ‘The Image of Our Lady’, which ‘were written to go with paintings in churches’. Schirmer may have derived this idea from

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Bowers, ‘Iconography’, p. 115, who claimed that while composing his Dance of Death Lydgate was ‘restricted to the exigencies of writing for iconographical purposes’. 45 Yet Lydgate often refers to colour and painting in his poetry: see C. Reynolds, ‘“In ryche colours delytethe the peyntour”: Painting and the Visual Arts in the Poems of John Lydgate’, in R. Marks (ed.), Late Gothic England: Art and Display (Donington/London, 2007), pp. 1-15, and also C. Cornell, ‘“Purtreture” and “Holsom Stories”: John Lydgate’s Accommodation of Image and Text in Three Religious Lyrics’, Florilegium, 10 (1988-91), pp. 167-78. Lydgate’s Dance is presumed to have been designed for public display in C. Sponsler, ‘Lydgate and London’s Public Culture’, in Cooper and Denny-Brown (eds), Lydgate Matters, pp. 13-33, esp. p. 20, while evidence for Lydgate’s Legend of St George having been incorporated in a textile hanging is discussed in J. Floyd, ‘St. George and the “Steyned Halle”: Lydgate’s Verse for the London Armourers’ on pp. 139-64 of the same volume. Both authors also discuss the occurrence of Lydgate’s Bycorne and Chychevache in a cloth hanging. 46 A similar reference to visual imagery in the French epilogue is the admonition ‘Acquitez vous qui cy passes’ (You who pass here, fulfil your duty); a line evidently written or adapted with public display in mind, yet retained in Lille ms. 319 and BL Add. MS 38858. Lydgate largely follows the two stanzas of the French acteur that come after those of the dead king whose ‘purtrature’ the poet expects his readers to ‘loken vpon’ (E:633). The stanzas were revised for the B version, which curiously has ‘scripture’ (L:561) for ‘purtrature’ and a new address to all ‘that reden this storye’ (L:572 – my italics), albeit some B version copies still read ‘loke vp-on’. 47 Warren, Dance of Death, pp. xxvii-xxviii. BL MS Lansdowne 699, Leiden MS Vossius C.G.Q. 9 and Lincoln Cathedral MS C.5.4. have the former, and Oxford Corpus Christi College MS 237 and MS Bodley 686 the latter, while BL MS Cotton Vespasian A. xxv has ‘Daunce of Deathe’. See also Appendix 2. 48 F. Kloppenborg, ‘The London Dance of Death: the Patron and his Circle of Friends’, in Actes du 11e Congrès International d’études sur les Danses macabres et l’art macabre en général (Meslay-leGrenet, 2003), pp. 9-24, at p. 9, n. 5; Pearsall, Lydgate, pp. 73-78; Schirmer, Lydgate, pp. 251-52. Many of Shirley’s surviving manuscript copies contain valuable information in their rubrics; see also n. 7 above. 49 See Connolly, John Shirley. A useful recent assessment of Shirley’s life and work, this study unfortunately contains no mention of Lydgate’s Dance of Death poem. 50 His epitaph on his brass in the church of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, as recorded by Stow, gives his date of death as 21 October 1456 ‘In the yeare of his age, fourscore and ten’; see Connolly, John Shirley, p. 11, and J. Stow, A Survey of London, reprinted from the text of 1603, ed. C.L. Kingsford, 2 vols (1908, repr. Oxford, 1971), 2, pp. 23-24. 51 Connolly, John Shirley, p. 191 and chapter 6, and esp. p. 126-27. 52 J. Stow, A Survay of London, Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Moderne estate, and description of that Citie, written in the yeare 1598 (London, 1598), pp. 264-65. Stow varies the spelling ‘Paul’ with ‘Powles’ (p. 263). 53 Kloppenborg, ‘London Dance of Death’, esp. pp. 16-17, 19, 20. 54 Pearsall, Lydgate, pp. 183-88; Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, pp. 29-31. See also Sponsler, ‘Lydgate and London’s Public Culture’, and Floyd, ‘St. George and the “Steyned Halle”’. 55 Stow, Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, 1, p. 109. Several revised editions of the Survey by other authors were to follow after Stow’s death. 56 According to Stow, Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, 1, pp. vii-xxviii, Stow was admitted to the freedom of the Merchant Taylors Company in 1547 and worked for nearly thirty years as a tailor, establishing his business in the Aldgate area between Leadenhall and Fenchurch Street. He was apparently inclined to favour the old faith. His claim that the scheme was painted on boards has gradually become established fact in the literature, often without reference to its (exact) source; see, for example, Clark, Dance of Death, p. 11, and Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik, p. 170. 57 Kloppenborg, ‘The London Dance of Death’, pp. 10-12, 20-21. According to Kloppenborg, this chapel had been built at the end of the thirteenth century by a London draper, Roger Beyvin, with a Fraternity of All Souls subsequently founded in 1379 to maintain it; Kloppenborg cites references to documents relating to the original foundation by Beyvin (PRO LR 14/345) and to Carpenter’s letters patent. The chapel and chantry are also mentioned in Stow, Survay of London (1598), p. 266-67, but with a different patron. 58 See, for example, Warren, Dance of Death, p. xxiii, n. 1, ‘It is probable that the painted dance was executed about the same time’. 59 C.M. Barron and M.-H. Rousseau, ‘Cathedral, City and State, 1300-1540’, in D. Keene, A. Burns and A. Saint (eds), St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London 604-2004 (New Haven/London, 2004),

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pp. 33-44, at p. 35; also Appleford, ‘Dance of Death’, and V. Harding, The Dead and Living in Paris and London, 1500-1600 (Cambridge, 2002), esp. pp. 86-93. It should be noted that the name ‘Pardon Churchyard’ applied to other London churchyards used for the burial of plague victims, such as one near the church of St Dunstan in the East and especially one in Smithfield said to have been purchased by the bishop of London for the burial of victims of the 1348-49 epidemic. The idea was that those buried there, even if without proper ceremony, would be granted indulgence for their sins. 60 Barron and Rousseau, ‘Cathedral, City and State’, p. 44; an inflammatory sermon in 1406 by the Lollard preacher William Taylor and Canon Ralph Shaa’s notorious assertions about the bastard status of both Edward IV and his offspring in a sermon delivered in 1483 are but two of the historic events that took place here. 61 F. Kloppenborg, ‘Totentänze in der religiösen Gebrauchskunst Englands’, in U. Wunderlich (ed.), L’art macabre 1, Jahrbuch der Europäischen Totentanz-Vereinigung (Düsseldorf, 2000), pp. 53-67, at p. 62. From 1449 the All Saints’ Church Book contains various entries for the hanging twice a year of a ‘Dance of Paul’s’. See also C. Burgess, The Pre-Reformation Records of All Saints’, Bristol, part 1 (Bristol, 1995), p. 88. 62 MacCracken and Sherwood, Minor Poems, no. 74, p. 834, ll. 66-67. 63 J.O. Halliwell (ed.), A Selection from the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate (London, 1842), pp. 2746, at p. 34, based on BL MS Harl. 372, fols 45-51. The poem is not included in MacCracken’s edition of Lydgate’s minor poems. 64 W. Puddephat, ‘The Mural Paintings of the Dance of Death in the Guild Chapel of Stratford-uponAvon’, Transactions of the Birmingham Archaeological Society, 76 (1958), pp. 29-35; C. Davidson, The Guild Chapel Wall Paintings at Stratford-upon-Avon, AMS Studies in the Renaissance, 22 (New York, 1988), esp. pp. 7-9 and Appendix III. Unfortunately, with the scheme hidden behind oak panelling it is impossible to verify Puddephat’s reading of what remained visible of the text; for example, Lydgate’s reference to the ‘exawmple [...] at Parise’ (E:19) has instead become ‘ensample [..] at paradyse’. The first part of the scheme, including the figures of the pope and emperor, was already lost. 65 Appleford, ‘The Dance of Death in London’, p. 295. I am grateful to the author for allowing me to read her text prior to publication. 66 Warren, Dance of Death, p. xxvi and further comments on p. xxvii. 67 For Tottel’s edition of Lydgate’s Daunce of Machabree, see Bergen, Fall of Princes, part 3, EETS, e.s. 123 (London, 1924), pp. 1025-44 (checked in the British Library against a microfilm of Tottel’s 1554 edition). Warren’s editorial notes indicate many similar variants in Trinity College Cambridge MS R. 3. 21 and Tottel’s edition, which suggests that the latter text may have been based on this manuscript copy or on a related version. 68 I am grateful to Professor Derek Pearsall for confirming my suspicions about the awkward scanning of some of the stanzas. 69 Warren, Dance of Death, p. xxviii; Douce, Dance of Death, p. 46. No information has been found on the lost Dance of Death scheme at Wortley Hall. 70 See, for example, J. Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, 1973). As Woolf, English Religious Lyric, pp. 348-49, pointed out, versions of Lydgate’s Dance are usually found in collections of poetic works by Lydgate and Chaucer, or Lydgate and Hoccleve, which convinced her that they were ‘not primarily for a didactic or meditative purpose’. 71 Barron and Rousseau, ‘Cathedral, City and State’, p. 36. 72 According to Reiner Sörries in W. Neumann (ed.), Tanz der Toten – Todestanz. Der monumentale Totentanz im deutschsprachigen Raum, exhibition catalogue Museum für Sepulkralkultur Kassel (Dettelbach, 1998), pp. 115-16, the Lübeck scheme was designed to express the citizen’s pride in their city. For a detailed discussion of the townscape in the renewed 1701 copy, see H. Vogeler, ‘Zum Gemälde des Lübecker und Revaler Totentanzes’, in H. Freytag (ed.), Der Totentanz der Marienkirche in Lübeck und der Nikolaikirche in Reval (Tallinn). Edition, Kommentar, Interpretation, Rezeption, Niederdeutsche Studien, 39 (Cologne/ Weimar/Vienna, 1993), pp. 95-101. 73 N. Rogers, ‘The Bury Artists of Harley 2278 and the Origins of Topographical Awareness in English Art’, in A. Gransden (ed.), Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture, Archaeology and Economy, The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 20 (Leeds, 1998), pp. 219-227, recognises a greater sense of realism and settings in the miniatures of the 1430s presentation copy of Lydgate’s Lives of SS. Edmund and Fremund (BL Harley MS 2278), but they contain nothing as innovative as a recognisable townscape. However, the sophisticated frontispiece miniature of c.1415-25 to Chaucer’s Troilus & Criseyde (Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 61, fol. 1v) illustrates what

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some painters in this period were capable of. See K.L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6 (London, 1996), vol. 1, fig. 242; vol. 2, cat. 58, pp. 182-85. 74 Stow, Survay of London, p. 265. 75 Simpson, Reform, p. 55. Throughout his discussion of the Dance, Simpson does not appear to make a distinction between the A and B versions. See also Simpson, ‘Bulldozing the Middle Ages’. 76 E. Taburet-Delahaye (ed.), Paris 1400: les arts sous Charles VI (Paris 2004), cat. 80. 77 Bergen, Fall of Princes, part 1, ll. 128, 159. 78 It would not be an unnatural assumption to identify the depicted author with Lydgate; W.A. Shaw, ‘The Early English School of Portraiture’, Burlington Magazine, 65 (October 1934), pp. 171-84, p. 183-84, even assumed that because the paintings in Pardon Churchyard included a poem by Lydgate as well as his name (based on Stow’s description), he must also have been responsible for the art work: ‘If he was not the painter why are they there, and why was his name there?’. I am grateful to Professor Robert Tittler for this reference. For comparison, the poet and painter Niklaus Manuel included his own portrait in his 1516-19 Totentanz mural in Berne. 79 The danse macabre scheme in Paris was freely adapted by artists elsewhere. Arches do feature in the mural in the nave of Notre Dame church at Kermaria (Brittany), but not in the schemes at Meslay le Grenet or La Ferté-Loupière that were directly modelled on Marchant’s woodcuts; the acteur is present at the start of the latter, but not at the conclusion, as is also the case in Morgan MS M.359. 80 Among these is the half-length portrait of Chaucer commissioned by Hoccleve (BL MS Harley 4866, fol. 88r); see also the discussion in Gillespie, Print Culture. 81 The two author portraits at the start and the end of the Danse Macabre des Femmes in the earlysixteenth-century manuscript BNF ms. fr. 995 (fols 24v and 43r), which was evidently modelled on Marchant’s 1491 woodcuts, illustrate more clearly a flowery textile canopy; see Harrison, Danse Macabre of Women, pp. 51 and 125. 82 E. Hodnett, English Woodcuts, 1480-1535 (1935, repr. Oxford, 1973), pp. 44, 350 (no. 1510) and fig. 142. 83 Thus, the image of the acteur at the start of Marchant’s 1485 Danse macabre edition was re-used as a portrait of the rhétoriqueur André de la Vigne (c.1470-c.1515) in the fifth edition of the anthology Le vergier d’honneur. See C. Brown, ‘Text, Image, and Authorial Self-Consciousness in Late Medieval Paris’, in Hindman, Printing the Written Word, pp. 103-42, esp. pp. 119, 121 and fig. 4.7 84 Hodnett, English Woodcuts, pp. 12, 50, 64, and figs 141 (no. 1509), 81 (no. 925) and 205 (no. 2168); the latter block was subsequently passed from Notary to Peter Treveris. Compare the de Worde woodcut in fig. 91 (no. 924), which Hodnett suspected to be copied from a French source, possibly even from the same block used by Pynson from 1513 on (no. 1510); and the de Worde woodcuts in figs 82-83 (nos 926-27), which in turn were copied by John Skot (fig. 209, no. 2373). The somewhat clumsy de Worde woodcut of St Jerome at his desk (fig. 22, no. 800) may be yet another adaptation of the same prototype. See also Gillespie, Print Culture, figs 15, 21, 24, 26 and 29. 85 Marchant inserted the legate and the duke between the king and the patriarch to fill an obvious gap in the hierarchy; the inclusion of the promoteur (solicitor) and the geolier (jailor) after the laboureur makes little sense, however, and still less the addition of the hallebardie (halberdier) and the sot (fool) after the final response of le mort to the hermit at the end of the danse proper. The choice and order of female characters in the Danse Macabre des Femmes likewise vary per manuscript and cannot simply be attributed to revision by the author, believed to be Martial d’Auvergne (c.1430/40-1508); the bigotte and sotte were likewise later additions by an unkonwn author. See L. Götz, ‘Martial d’Auvergne: La Dance des Femmes’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, 58 (1934), pp. 318-34, esp. p. 314; and also S. Oosterwijk, ‘“Alas, poor Yorick”: Death, the Fool, the Mirror and the Danse Macabre’, in S. Knöll (ed.), Narren – Masken – Karneval. Meisterwerke von Dürer bis Kubin aus der Düsseldorfer Graphiksammlung ‘Mensch und Tod’, exhibition catalogue (Regensburg, 2009), pp. 1931, esp. pp. 25 and 132-34 (catalogue entries). 86 The confused hierarchy in some other versions of the danse, as well as in the Vado Mori, was also noticed in Corvisier, ‘Représentation de la société’, pp. 489-539, pp. 496-97. Corvisier tried to explain it as either negligence on the part of the author or copyist, or a deliberate device to show that death strikes at random without respecting rank. 87 H. Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche Totentanz: Entstehung - Enwicklung - Bedeutung (1954, revised edn Cologne/Graz, 1968), pp. 38-43, and by the same author ‘Vadomori’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 124 (1995), pp. 257-64; also D.Th. Enklaar, De dodendans: een cultuurhistorische studie (Amsterdam, 1950), pp. 28-31; Clark, Dance of Death, 101-2.

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Rosenfeld, Mittelalterliche Totentanz, pp. 325-26. A variation of the Erfurt version, found in BL MS Lansdowne 397, is published and discussed in E.P. Hammond, ‘Latin Texts of the Dance of Death’, Modern Philology, 8 (1910/11), pp. 399-410, together with a longer Latin Lamentatio poem of later date in BL MS Royal 8 B vi, the latter already noted by Francis Douce. 89 Rosenfeld, Mittelalterliche Totentanz, pp. 323-25. Although Rosenfeld believed the Paris version to be older, its expanded range of characters and the fact that it starts with the king rather than the pope would appear to point to the ‘Erfurt’ version being earlier. 90 In contrast, the – admittedly later – mitteldeutsche Totentanz variant features a ‘block’ ordering of different estates, while the late fifteenth-century Totentanz mural in the Marienkirche in Berlin shows a strict separation of clerical characters to the left of the Crucifixion and secular to the right. See Brand, ‘Mitteldeutsche Totentanztradition’, esp. p. 26 and table of characters on pp. 32-33; P. Walther, Der Berliner Totentanz zu St. Marien (Berlin, 1997). 91 For a discussion of the matching characters in The Canterbury Tales, see Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire, and L.C. Lambdin and R.T. Lambdin (eds), Chaucer’s Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales (Westport, CT, 1996). 92 Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire, pp. 67-73, remarks on the traditional linking of the two ideals of priesthood and labour with reference to the ploughman – the peasant representative used by both Langland and Chaucer. 93 See Warren, Dance of Death, editorial notes on pp. 38-39. The term refers either to dividing the heavens into twelve ‘houses’ or to locating the planets in their respective ‘houses’. 94 One renowned physician of the period was Guillaume de Harcigny, who managed to cure the young King Charles VI from his first bout of insanity in 1392; he was also the author of various medical treatises. After his death in 1393, aged 93, Harcigny was commemorated in Laon Cathedral with one of the earliest known cadaver effigies that is also surprisingly accurate in its anatomical detail. See K. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, California Studies in the History of Art, 15 (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1973), pp. 103-4 (notes) and figs 1-2; Taburet-Delahaye, Paris 1400, cat. 158. 95 As noted by Warren, Dance of Death, p. 110; Hammond, English Verse, p. 420, l. 207. 96 The line in the Ellesmere Manuscript reads ‘Preste & dette mote be 3olde a-3eyne’ (E:159), but the Lansdowne text has ‘Preestes & deth may nat be holden a-geyn’ (L:119), MS Vossius C.G.Q. 9 has ‘Prestis & dethe may not be holdyn ageyne’ (p. 62), and other versions contain yet further variants. It is thus unclear whether Lydgate’s copyists quite understood this phrase or the French word ‘prest’ (loan). 97 These popular woodcuts with accompanying verses that depict the various ranks and professions in a secular way, but without the appearance of Death, include the German Ständebuch with verses by Hans Sachs and woodcuts by Jost Amman published in 1568. J. Amman, Das Ständebuch. Herrscher, Handwerker und Künstler des ausgehenden Mittelalters, ed. U. Schulze (Cologne, 2006). Like the danse, the Ständebuch also opens with the pope, but follows on with the cardinal, bishop and three more religious representatives before continuing with the emperor and king. Its later Dutch equivalent (published in 1694) is De spiegel van het menselijk bedrijf by Jan Luyken (1649-1712). 98 Also applicable to Henry V amidst the unnamed ‘conquerowres’ is the explanation of how Death ‘can abate the fresshnes of her flowres / Ther bri3t sune clipsen with hys showres’. Flowers were often used in comparisons with youth and courtly love: Henry was around thirty-five (the exact date and year of his birth are unknown) so in his prime, and had only been married to Catherine of Valois for just over two years. It may also be relevant that the first and third stanzas of the ‘Verba translatoris’ were included as an epilogue in the Stratford Guild Chapel scheme, but not the second stanza: see above and n. 64. Allusions to Henry V in Lydgate’s Dance – and thus the possibility that these also featured in the Pardon Churchyard scheme – are still being investigated. 99 For example, the painted figure of King Arthur – a cryptoportrait of Henry VIII – was added to the so-called King Arthur’s table at Winchester probably on the occasion of Henry VIII’s visit to Winchester in 1516 or his second visit (with Emperor Charles V) in 1522. The table (which itself dates to Edward I’s reign) was repainted in 1789. See P. Tudor-Craig, ‘Iconography of the Painting’, in M. Biddle (ed.), King Arthur’s Round Table: An Archaeological Investigation (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 285-334. 100 C. Davidson, The Guild Chapel Wall Paintings at Stratford-upon-Avon (New York, 1988), fig. 20. The inclusion of Vado Mori verses above the figures indicate that one of Marchant’s later editions was used. If the king in the Stratford painting did represent Henry VII, John Shakespeare would have faced the dilemma of leaving exposed ‘idolatrous’ images of the pope and other Catholic clergy or whitewashing a representation of the reigning mother’s grandfather. I am grateful to Ann Donnelly for the illustration and to Dr Miriam Gill.

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Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 686; see Warren, Dance of Death, p. xxviii. Warren, Dance of Death, p. 111, cites H.F. Massmann’s 1840s Literatur des Todtentänze, p. 88, about there being ‘a very close resemblance between the French and German versions here’, which is not surprising since the (unnamed) Knoblochtzer Totentanz was inspired by Marchant’s edition. 103 The feminist claim in J.A. Wisman, ‘Un miroir déformant: hommes et femmes des Danses macabres de Guyot Marchant’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 23 (1993), pp. 275-99, at p. 284, about there being a ‘manque d’attention porté à l’âge des hommes’ is at best naïve: the appearance of the characters in the lost mural, and the focus on their individual foibles in the poem, would have signalled their intended ages quite clearly to medieval viewers. 104 Hammond, English Verse, p. 423, mentions the example of the Chaucerian poem ‘Against Women Unconstant’ printed by W.W. Skeat. The French line ‘vous changeres coleur’ may have been Lydgate’s inspiration here. According to the MED, Lydgate uses ‘grene’ both in the meaning of young, immature or inexperienced, and as a symbol of inconstancy and envy. 105 See E. Dal, with collaboration from P. Skårup, The Ages of Man and the Months of the Year: Poetry, Prose and Pictures Outlining the Douze Mois Figurés Motif Mainly Found in Shepherds’ Calendars and in Livres d’Heures (14th to 17th Century), Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab Historisk-filosofische Skrifter 9:3 (Copenhagen, 1980), esp. pp. 12, 46. 106 L.F. Sandler, Omne Bonum. A Fourteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge. British Library MSS Royal 6 E VI – 6 E VII, 2 vols (London, 1996), vol. 1, p. 97, and vol. 2, p. 24. The scribe (and probably also the compiler of the text) has been identified as James le Palmer (d. 1375), who copied the text for his own use; he relied heavily on Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ De Proprietatibus Rerum. I am grateful to Dr Margaret Scott for bringing this particular miniature to my attention. 107 E. Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton, 1986), p. 130 and fig. 65; B. Hernad, Die gotischen Handschriften deutscher Herkunft in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, 1: Vom späten 13. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 2000), cat. 178 and pl. 399. 108 The Danse Macabre des Femmes was not composed until the later fifteenth century, possibly by the poet Martial d’Auvergne (c.1430/40-1508) whose name occurs in at least one manuscript (BNF ms.fr. 25434). See Götz, ‘Martial d’Auvergne’, p. 318; Harrison, Danse Macabre of Women, and S.F. Wemple and D.A. Kaiser, ‘Death’s Dance of Women’, Journal of Medieval History, 12 (1986), pp. 333-43; also Wisman, ‘Un miroir déformant’. 109 Hammond, English Verse, p. 424; Warren offers no explanatory notes on the juror. 110 See notes in Warren, pp. 112-13, and Hammond, English Verse, p. 425. Hammond only managed to find records of a John Michel in the 1415 list of royal minstrels and fools, who is no longer mentioned in 1423 amongst those of the royal servants granted money by the new king Henry VI. 111 Pearsall, Lydgate, p. 178. Seymour, ‘Some Lydgate Manuscripts’, p. 22, hints that the abbess might not be of Lydgate’s own composition but an interpolation. 112 See Hammond, English Verse, note on p. 421. 113 Warren’s glossary defines a ‘barbe’ as a piece of white plaited linen covering the lower part of the face, which was worn by nuns and for mourning. 114 Warren, Dance of Death¸ pp. xxvi-xxvii, xxxi: the other manuscript copy is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 53. 115 Woolf, English Religious Lyric, p. 351. 116 Particularly damning was the character reference by the contemporary humanist Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (later pope Pius II, 1405-64), who described her as a woman of inexhaustible lust, devoid of any religion, and only bent on vain earthly delights: ‘Vivendum suaviter, dum vita suppetit, fruendumque voluptatibus’ (transl.: She believed that one should live life sweetly, as long as life lasted, and enjoy earthly pleasures). See T. Pálosfalvi, ‘Barbara und die Grafen von Cilli’, in I. Takács (ed.), Sigismundus, Rex et Imperator. Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit Sigismunds von Luxembourg 13871437, exhibition catalogue (Mainz, 2006), pp. 295-97, and esp. A. Fössel, ‘Barbara von Cilli. Ihre frühen Jahre als Gemahlin Sigismunds und ungarische Königin’, in M. Pauly and F. Reinert (eds), Sigismund von Luxembourg. Ein Kaiser in Europa (Mainz, 2006), pp. 95-112 and n. 18. Barbara was never crowned empress and never used the title imperatrix augusta herself, but others referred to her as empress, just as Sigismund was regarded emperor long before his coronation in Rome in 1433. 117 Pearsall, Bio-bibliography, p. 30, quotes a rubric by John Shirley to the effect that Lydgate wrote the rather morbid ubi sunt poem That now is Hay some-tyme was Grase ‘at the commaundement of the Quene Kateryn as in here sportes she walkyd by the medowes that were late mowen in the monthe of Iulij’. See also Connolly, John Shirley, p. 184. The poem conjures up the image of dead heroines such as Helen and Dido, and how death destroyed ‘Their freshenes, and made them full base’ (H.N. 102

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MacCracken (ed.), The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, part I, EETS, e.s. 107 (London, 1911, repr. 1962), no. 69, l. 54) – a line that was to prove almost prophetic in view of the later vicissitudes of the queen’s own embalmed corpse at Westminster Abbey where her funeral effigy is still on display. 118 Clark, Dance of Death, p. 12; Clark dates the Dance of Death c.1440. 119 Lydgate’s misogyny is evident in his claim that Chaucer ‘Was inportable his wittis to encoumbre’ to find nineteen examples of ‘bounte and fairnesse’ for his Legend of Good Women. See Bergen, Fall of Princes, vol. 1, book I, ll. 335, 333; Pearsall, Lydgate, p. 236. 120 Pearsall, Lydgate, p. 18. 121 Pearsall, Lydgate, p. 232, defines it as Lydgate amplifying ‘an already well-padded original’ – for Premierfait had already ‘inflated’ Boccaccio’s text – while Bergen, Fall of Princes, p. xvii, describes Lydgate as ‘suffering under the same inability to let well enough alone’. The latter sentiment becomes more understandable when one reads Pearsall’s statement, Lydgate, p. 235, that ‘the most overwhelming of Lydgate’s amplifications in the Fall are in the form of moralisation’, although there is also added material from Ovid, the Bible, Boccaccio’s De Genealogia Deorum, and other books lent to him by his patron duke Humphrey (pp. 239ff.). 122 Regular canons were in holy orders and belonged to a community of priests living under a rule (especially the Augustinian rule). 123 Compare the multiple variations on Death’s ‘come forth’ summons in both the A and B version: ‘Come forth a-noon my lady & Princesse’ (E:185); ‘Come forthe Sire Squyer’ (E:217); ‘Come forthe Sire Abbot’ (E:233); ‘Come forthe Sire Bailli’ (E:265); ‘Come forthe maister’ (E:281; L:369); ‘Come forthe Sire Sergeaunt’ (E:361; L:401); ‘Come forthe Maistresse’ (E:449; L:353); ‘Com forth doctour of Canon & Cyvile’ (L:225); ‘Com forth sir Mayr’ (L:257); ‘Come neer sir Sergeant’ (L:337); ‘Com riche marchant’ (L:481). The references to hands are: ‘Gefe me 3owre honde [Carthusian]’ (E:345; L:321); ‘Lat se your hand my lady dame Empresse’ (L:65); ‘That hand of youres my lord Iustice’ (L:209); ‘Lat see your hand sir chanon Reguler’ (L:273); ‘Yeve hidir thyn hand thou Artificeer’ (L:497). Compare also ‘Sire Cordelere to 3ow my hande is rawght’ (E:561; L:385); 124 For this reason, D.L. Boyd’s study of a late fifteenth-century compilation of Hoccleve and Lydgate texts in ‘Reading through the Regiment of Princes: Hoccleve’s Series and Lydgate’s Dance of Death in Yale Beinecke MS 493’, Fifteenth-Century Studies, 20 (1983), pp. 15-34, does not give us an insight into how the poem was originally received, but rather into how a later generation read it solely as a text.

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Chapter 5: ‘Muoz ich tanzen und kan nit gân?’

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Chapter 6: Money, Morality, Mortality

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ADDENDUM Since publication of this article it has been pointed out to me by Professor Pamela King that the Coventry ‘Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors’ survives only in an early-nineteenth-century edition and not in a late-medieval manuscript, as erroneously stated on p. 47. While looking through the Drapers’ Accounts in the REED volume for Coventry (n. 43), I was unaware of a character in the lost Cappers’ pageant of the Harrowing of Hell who is described in the Cappers’ Accounts as the ‘mother of death’; she may represent Sin but is not really germane to my argument here. However, I am grateful to Professor Pamela King for bringing the above error and omission to my attention, and to Professor Meg Twycross for further information on the Cappers’ pageant.

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CONCLUSION The main aim of this thesis has been to investigate the development of the danse macabre theme in late-medieval England, from John Lydgate’s translation of the French Danse Macabre poem to the spread of the theme into drama, painting, print, and even sculpture and tomb iconography. Vital for assessing the nature and importance of the Dance of Death, however, is an understanding of how this English interpretation of the theme relates to other examples of the danse on the Continent, most notably in France where Lydgate originally found the inspiration for his poem. For this reason, the scope of the thesis is in reality much wider than the title implies. As we have seen, the danse macabre is but one of several contemptus mundi themes that were in circulation across medieval Europe, albeit with both regional variations and changes in perspective over time. There are earlier poems in both Latin and the vernacular that describe the state of the body after death, including dialogues between the soul and the body or between the body and the worms consuming it, of which some were depicted in art. These various themes may have influenced the development of the danse in different ways: the story of the Three Living and the Three Dead as both a dialogue and as a visual motif that was effective in transmitting its message even without text; the Vado Mori verses as a monologue in which various representatives lament their imminent demise (rather like in the early Latin-German Totentanz); and the cadaver or transi effigy, which often combines vivid images of decomposition with verses in which the dead remind the living of their own end, ‘Sum quod eris’, or ‘as I am now so will you be’ – a much older idea also voiced by the Three Dead and by the dead dancers. An important parallel is the Ars Moriendi tradition, which offers guidance on how to prepare for death. The increasingly horrific – and even violent – depiction of death in the fifteenth century does not suggest so much a greater obsession with mortality amongst the population at large, however, but rather the opposite: the fact that moralists felt the need to emphasise and reiterate warnings about man’s inevitable fate indicates that contemporaries were too much inclined to focus on earthly pleasures instead. In the case of the danse, a normally joyful but worldly pastime is transformed into a horrifying and deadly encounter. The performative nature of the danse is yet another interesting aspect, both in relation to its origins and to its subsequent development. Encounters between Death and the living are a regular feature in medieval drama, from the death of Herod in mystery plays to morality plays such as Everyman. These raise the question of whether the danse may have had its origins in some type of performance, as has often been suggested. Related to this is the question of whether the original idea was that of a dialogue between Death and the living, or an actual dance in which the dead compel the living to join them. The latter scenario may yet have Death as the key orchestrator to whose tune all dancers – both living and dead – must dance; an image that we find not only in the Lübeck Totentanz where a flute-playing corpse figure leads the cortège of dancers much like the Pied Piper, but also in the enigmatic ‘Imago mortis’ woodcut in the Nuremberg Chronicle. One may hypothesise about the performative nature of the extant texts or of the surviving murals – the latter with their sense of movement, body language and gestures, that may have taken their inspiration from drama yet also have inspired performances in their turn. Surviving records indicate that the danse was indeed performed at times, yet there is insufficient proof that the theme had its origins in some form of dramatic enactment.

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Until now, scholars have been unable to offer a satisfactory explanation for the long silence between Jehan le Fèvre’s first mention of ‘la dance de Macabré’ in his 1376 poem and the creation of the mural in 1424-25. If le Fèvre was referring to a Danse Macabre poem of his own composition, then that work has been lost (which was the fate of all too many medieval texts). Yet it is proposed here that such a lost poem – either by le Fèvre or another version that Le Fèvre was probably familiar with – formed the basis for the anonymous Danse Macabre poem that was adapted for the mural at Les Innocents and that Lydgate subsequently translated into Middle English. This extant Danse still contains the remnants of opening verses that address each preceding character; a feature it shares with the Spanish Dança General de la Muerte, which was itself probably derived from a French prototype, although further research is needed to try and understand the relationship between these two strands of the danse macabre tradition. As a future project for literary scholars, a comparison between the Dança, the extant Danse Macabre poem and le Fèvre’s other poetry may help shed further light on the still nebulous origins of the theme. The historical situation in Paris in 1424 – most notably the death of Charles VI in 1422 and the English occupation of the city – explains how some anomalies and allusions in the Danse at Les Saints Innocents were probably introduced for political reasons. As we have seen, one of these anomalies is the glaring omission of the duke: a figure that occurs in both the Dança, the Totentanz, and in at least one early illumination cycle (i.e. Morgan MS M.359), but not in the mural nor in Lydgate’s translation. If the mural did indeed contain a cryptoportrait of Charles VI and antiOrléans references, then it must have been a deliberate adaptation of an earlier didactic poem to suit a political purpose, with the most likely patron being Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. This makes the Danse Macabre poem as we know a palimpsest of an earlier, lost poem possibly (but not necessarily) by le Fèvre himself; a poem that was sufficiently well known to inspire a Spanish translation, although once the danse had risen to unprecedented fame through its inclusion in the mural it was the revised poem that became the accepted version, superseding the earlier text. By omitting the addresses to preceding characters and changing le mort into Death personified, Lydgate’s Dance of Death was thus another stage in this process of adaptating the now redundant prototype. Whether Lydgate was aware of the political connotations of the French poem and the mural is hard to establish, but it seems likely. The second stanza of his added ‘Verba translatoris’ reads very much like a lament for the sudden death of Henry V and in addition he chose to introduce a named contemporary character – Henry V’s tregetour – in his own poem. The Danse Macabre mural in Paris was instrumental in the spread of the theme throughout France and beyond, culminating in Guy Marchant’s woodcut editions which themselves served as a model for subsequent schemes, including the mural at Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet it was the incorporation of Lydgate’s Dance in John Carpenter’s painted scheme at Pardon Churchyard in London that made the theme known across England, not by the title ‘Dance of Macabré’ used by Lydgate but by the name derived from its location at Old St Paul’s Cathedral. The fact that a reference to the ‘Dance of Paul’s’ can already be found in a Bristol will in the 1440s shows how rapidly its fame had spread, for although Carpenter’s scheme cannot be securely dated it was probably created some time in the early 1430s or even the late 1420s; Carpenter himself died in 1442, but a 1430 licence for a chantry priest in a nearby chapel illustrates his interest in Old St Paul’s at this time. The question is whether Carpenter’s scheme was based on a revised version of Lydgate’s poem in which civic representatives predominated, as has been claimed, or

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whether it followed the A version with its allusions to Henry V and his tregetour. If the schemes in Paris and London did contain cryptoportraits of the two recently dead monarchs, it would support the tradition of cryptoportraits of the by then likewise deceased Sigismund and Albrecht in the Totentanz mural of c.1440 at Basel. Crucial though Carpenter’s scheme was for the dissemination of the Dance of Death theme in England, Lydgate need not have envisaged such a scheme when he first composed his poem. There is also no evidence for the traditional assumption that he subsequently revised the text specifically for this project, nor are there any records of what Carpenter’s painted Dance looked like or which characters it comprised. As we have seen, there is great variation not just between the so-called A and B versions, but also amongst the different B copies themselves. Several of the new or revised stanzas in the B version are unlikely to be by Lydgate, albeit that further textual analysis is needed to determine the extent of later variance and interpolation. There are also more extant copies of the A text, which is moreover the version that Richard Tottel chose to use for his 1554 edition of the Dance as an appendix to Lydgate’s Fall of Princes. Tottel’s choice of text is another argument in favour of the A version if this relatively late appearance of the Dance in print was indeed motivated by antiquarian interest in the Pardon Churchyard scheme, which had been destroyed only five years earlier. Just as happened in France and elsewhere, the rapid dissemination of the Dance of Death in art is evidence of its appeal to patrons. It is doubtful that Lydgate’s poem was the immediate inspiration for the many ways in which the theme was visualised by English artists, or even if the scheme at Pardon Churchyard served as the actual model. The recorded Bristol cloth hanging with its painted ‘Dawnse of Powlys’ was probably a variation on the theme as it was understood by its donor William Wytteney. The same applies to Thomas Cooke’s lost brass at Ludlow, which according to his 1513 will was to depict himself, his wife and a figure of Death ‘after the daunce of powles’ with a text scroll bearing the familiar ‘as I am now ...’ warning. Wytteney’s and Cooke’s wills are but two examples that testify to the appeal that the Dance held for donors; there are other, extant monuments showing Dance of Death influences, such as the brass of James Gray (d. 1591) at Hunsdon (Hertfordshire) or the much earlier brass of John Rudyng (d. 1481) at Biggleswade (Bedfordshire). Imported Danse Macabre or Totentanz prints from the Continent probably served as inspiration for artists or for such donors as Ralph Hamsterley (d. 1518), whose shroud brass at Oddington (Oxfordshire) is an unusual example of the ‘verminous’ variety in England. Despite there being no early printing tradition of Dance of Death texts and images in England, the theme found its way into other media, such as stained glass at Norwich or sculpture as at Windsor, Coventry and – if we include Scotland – Rosslyn Chapel: evidence of the impact the theme had on an unusually wide variety of artists and patrons. The (destroyed) misericords in the church of St Michael in Coventry are important as English examples of the Dance not only because of their iconography or the relatively rare use of danse macabre imagery in choir-stalls across Europe, but also because of their association with late-medieval drama. The misericords were probably once situated in a chapel used by the Drapers’ Guild, who were responsible for staging the lost Doomsday play in the famous Coventry Corpus Christi pageants. The misericord carvings, which are known to have featured the Last Judgement as well as juxtapositions of the Dance of Death and the Corporal Acts of Mercy, would have fitted well with the Guild’s interests. For comparison, two of the plays in the

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extant late-medieval Chester Cycle also appear to contain allusions to the Dance of Death that the playwrights expected their audiences to understand. The Coventry misericords serve as further proof of the adaptability of the danse macabre, in this case in a combination with the Corporal Acts of Mercy. Quite apart from the political meanings it held at any time of its history, most notably in the Paris mural, the danse lent itself well to a juxtaposition with other moralising themes. For example, we know that the Dance of Death scheme in Stratford-upon-Avon also incorporated a separate cycle of the Seven Deadly Sins. Combining social satire with didactic lessons about sin and death, the danse characterises many social types by specific sins such as greed or pride. Yet it was also influenced by other popular medieval themes, such as the Ages of Man, and some of the characters in the Dance – most notably the child and the amoureux – were unmistakable representatives of specific Ages. Words can be read in different ways by different people, and it is vital to remember when studying the poems that the danse macabre was not just a literary but also a visual theme. It was probably the combination of text and pictures – or, in the case of drama, actual performance – that provided the necessary clues to help readers or viewers appreciate the theme at any given time in its history. This is true as much of the lost Danse Macabre mural in Paris and of Carpenter’s Dance of Death scheme in London as it is of other instances where references to the theme may not have been recognised or understood by later scholars. It is symptomatic that such references relied on medieval people’s familiarity with the danse, whereas they can only be understood nowadays if we accept that the theme was indeed much better known in the late-medieval period than it is today. The importance of early danse macabre schemes, such as the snow figures of 1434-35 in Arras or the marginal decoration in BnF ms. 2535, is also often not registered by medievalists who mistake them for just common occurrences of an overly familiar medieval theme. This lack of understanding and the loss of so many medieval records, texts and art at the Reformation and long after have meant that we are no longer capable of grasping the full extent of knowledge and culture of the Middle Ages, and this includes an appreciation of the former importance of the danse. There are many examples in literature and art that attest to a continuing interest in the Dance of Death and other vanitas lessons in the Middle Ages and beyond. What should not be forgotten is the fact that not only the forms of these lessons may differ, but also their messages. The story of the Three Living and the Three Dead originally conveyed a salutary warning about the need for repentance before it is too late; it is in the course of the fifteenth century that this warning loses its positive meaning and instead becomes one of sheer horror, especially in art where the dialogue is missing and the emphasis is instead on the terrifying appearance and aggressive nature of the Dead. The Triumph of Death (which was prevalent in Italy) illustrates the suppremacy of death over life, yet one also finds the positive message that fame is stronger yet. Many monuments aimed to show that death is merely a transition into a better life and that the corruption of the body constitutes only a temporary loss, pending the general resurrection on Judgement Day. The danse likewise developed and changed over time. It probably began as an allmale theme comprising in particular clerical and courtly characters, the latter reminiscent of both the Three Living and of the doomed rulers and heroes in Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium; the latter text was subsequently adapted and expanded by Lydgate to illustrate how the mighty may fall. Yet in the course of the fifteenth century the danse came to include female characters as well as an

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increasingly wider range of social types. The element of social and religious satire also grew stronger, at the expense of the moralising message of the danse, which is what we find in Holbein’s woodcuts. A much later example of such a satirical approach is Thomas Rowlandson’s English Dance of Death, which once more combines text and image, albeit that this work illustrates very much a revival of interest in the theme. There is still a great fascination with the danse on the Continent, where monumental examples survive to this day. Yet in England the Dance of Death has become largely unknown or poorly understood theme, despite the fact that Francis Douce was one of the earliest scholars to take an interest. Too often the danse is studied in isolation, as just a text or a visual motif, and as national phenomenon without external influences. This also pertains to the English variant, the Dance of Death, of which there remain but few examples in art. Lydgate’s poem was not just a translation but a link in the literary development of the theme; misericords and tomb monuments provide further evidence of its reception and interpretation. We may still not know whether the theme originated in France, Germany or elsewhere, or in what form. Much more work also remains to be done on such aspects as reception, dissemination, estates satire, and the relevance of the querelle des femmes to the danse. This thesis has shown the importance of studying and comparing the theme on an international scale. The danse may not always have inspired great poetry or great art, or even provided a very helpful view of late-medieval society. It may have been only one motif in a much wider range of death-related themes that emerged and developed in the course of the Middle Ages. Yet unlike the story of the Three Living and the Three Dead it never quite disappeared, even if it underwent many changes over time and generated yet new forms and motifs, such as Death and the Maiden. Though an earlier version of the poem may have been in existence for decades, in 1420s Paris the Danse Macabre may have been the right text for the right circumstances at the right time, as Lydgate may have recognised when he adapted it for an English readership. From probably its earliest and best known public manifestation in the cemetery of Les Saints Innocents in Paris, the danse spread, evolved, and continued to inspire artists and writers until the present day; a development far beyond anything the unknown painter and poet could ever have imagined. Lydgate’s Dance of Death is just one example of this dissemination, albeit a more important – and in many ways enigmatic – example than has hitherto been appreciated. What contemporary visitors to Les Saints Innocents and Pardon Churchyards saw and understood can only be guessed at; what later generations made of the danse on either side of the Channel is an entirely different matter.

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APPENDIX 1: Woodcut illustrations in Guy Marchant’s 1485 edition of the Danse Macabre (taken from the facsimile edition by G. Kaiser, Der tanzende Tod, with the first two illustrations from Marchant’s 1486 edition).

Lacteur

Le pape + lempereur

Le cardinal + le roy

Le patriarche + le connestable

Larcheuesque + le cheualier

Leuesque + lescuier

Labbe + le bailly

Le maistre + le bourgois

Le chanoine + le marchant

Le chartreux + le sergent

Le moinne + lusurier + le poure homme

Le medecin + lamoreux

Le cure + le laboureur

Laduocat + le menestrel

Le cordelier + lenfant

Le clerc + le hermite

Vng roy mort + lacteur

Appendices

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APPENDIX 2: Order of characters in copies of Lydgate’s Dance of Death* with a list of manuscripts divided into groups. * MS Ellesmere (EL 26.A.13) and MS Lansdowne 699, based on Warren’s edition, the latter version matching the order in Lincoln Cathedral Library MS C.5.4 (129) and Leiden University Library, MS Vossius C.G.Q. 9. Warren corrected the order in the Ellesmere manuscript to match that of other A group manuscripts. Spelling follows that of the original labels, with ‘clerical’ characters underlined, female characters in bold, and Roman numerals matching the order of stanzas in the Ellesmere and Lansdowne manuscripts according to Warren’s edition. Characters occurring in only one group are indicated with an asterisk. MS Ellesmere MS Lansdowne 699 (Warren group A) (Warren group B) ʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊ Verba translatoris (I-V) Verba auctoris (VI-VII) 1. Pope (VIII-IX) 2. Emperowre (X-XI) 3. Cardynall (XII-XIII) 4. Kynge (XIV-XV) [= L6] 5. Patriarke (XVI-XVII) 6. Constable (XVIII-XIX) [= L8] 7. Archebisshop (XX-XI) 8. Baroun or kny3t (XXII-XXIII) [= L10] *9. Lady of gret astate (XXIV-XXV) 10. Bysshoppe (XXVI-XXVII) [= L9] 11. Squyere (XXVIII-XXIX) [= L15] 12. Abbott (XXX-XXXI) [= L11] 13. Abbesse (XXXII-XXXIII) [= L12] *14. Baylly (XXXIV-XXXV) 15. Astronomere (XXXVI-XXXVII) [= L23] *16. Burgeys (XXXVIII-XXXIX) 17. Chanoun (XL-XLI) [= L18] 18. Marchaunte (XLII-XLIII) [= L30] 19. Chartereux (XLIV-XLV) [= L20] 20. Sergeaunt (XLVI-XLVII) [= L25] *21. Monk (XLVIII-XLIX) *22. Vsurere (L-LI) +Pore man (LII) 23. Phisician (LIII-LIV) [= L29] *24. Amerous squyere (LV-LVI) 25. Gentilwoman amerous (LVII-LVIII) [= L22] 26. Man of lawe (LIX-LX) [= L21] 27. Jouroure (LXI-LXII) [= L26] 28. Mynstralle (LXIII-LXIV) [= L27] *29. Tregetoure (LXV-LXVI) *30. Persoun (LXVII-LXVII) 31. Laborere (LXIX-LXX) [= L32] 32. Frere menour (LXXI-LXXII) [= L24] 33. Chylde (LXXIII-LXXIV) [= L33]

-[Verba auctoris] (I) + ‘Angel’ (II) 1. Papa (III-IV) 2. Imperator (V-VI) 3. Cardinalis (VII-VIII) *4. Imperatrix (IX-X) 5. Patriarcha (XI-XII) 6. Rex (XIII-XIV) 7. Archiepiscopus (XV-XVI) 8. Princeps (XVII-XVIII) 9. Episcopus (XIX-XX) 10. Comes & Baro (XXI-XXII) 11. Abbas & Prior (XXIII-XXIV) 12. Abbatissa (XXV-XXVI) *13. Iudex (XXVII-XXVIII) *14. Doctor vtriusque Juris (XXIX-XXX) 15. Miles & Armiger (XXXI-XXXII) *16. Maior (XXXIII-XXXIV) *17. Canonicus Regularis (XXXV-XXXVI) 18. Decanus (XXXVII-XXXVIII) *19. Monialis (XXXIX-XL) 20. Chartreux (XLI-XLII) 21. Sergeant’ in lawe (XLIII-XLIV) 22. Generosa (XLV-XLVI) 23. Magister in Astronomia (XLVII-XLVIII) 24. Frater (XLIX-L) 25. Sergant’ (LI-LII) 26. Iurour’ (LIII-LIV) 27. Mimus (LV-LVI) *28. Famulus (LVII-LVIII) 29. Phisicus (LIX-LX) 30. Mercator (LXI-LXII) *31. Artifex (LXIII-LXIV) 32. Laborarius (LXV-LXVI) 33. Infans (LXVII-LXVIII)

Appendices

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*34.

Clerke (LXXV-LXXVI) 35. Ermyte (LXXVII-LXXVIII) [= L34]

*Dethe

34. Heremita (LXIX-LXX) ---

a-3en to the Ermyte (LXXIX)

---

Kynge liggyng dede & eten with wormes (LXXX)

‘Conclusio’ (LXXI)

Machabre the Doctoure (LXXXI-LXXXII)

[Author] (LXXII)

*Lenvoye

---

de translatoure (LXXXIII-LXXXIV)

________________________________________________________________

F. Warren, group A:

F. Warren, group B:

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Selden Supra 53 Huntingdon Library, MS Ellesmere (EL 26.A.13) London, BL MS Harley 116 Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.21 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud 735 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 221

Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 237 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 686 London, BL MS Lansdowne 699 Leiden Univ. Library, MS Vossius C.G.Q. 9 Lincoln Cathedral, MS C.5.4 London, BL MS Cotton Vespasian A. xxv

Additional manuscripts in this group: New Haven, Yale Univ. Library Beinecke MS 493 Coventry, P.R.O. MS 325/1 Rome, Venerable English College MS 1306

__________

Appendices

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APPENDIX 3: Comparison of characters in the Danse Macabre texts in Marchant’s 1485 edition, Lille ms. 139* and BL Add. MS 38858**, and in Lydgate’s Dance of Death. * Lille, Bibl. publ., ms. 139, as edited in E.P. Hammond, English Verse (1965), pp. 427-35. ** As edited in F. Warren, Dance of Death (1931), pp. 79-96. (The order in MS Ellesmere (EL 26.A.13) and MS Lansdowne 699 has been adapted to allow comparison of characters; spelling follows that of the original labels, with ‘clerical’ characters indicated underlined, female characters in bold.) Marchant (1485 edition) Lydgate MS Ellesmere Lydgate MS Lansdowne and Lille manuscript (Warren group A) (Warren group B) ʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊ --Lacteur

Verba translatoris Verba auctoris

-[Verba auctoris] + ‘Angel’

1. Le pape 2. Lempereur 3. Le cardinal --4. Le roy 5. Le patriarche 6. Le connestable 7. Larcheueque 8. Le cheualier --9. Leuesque 10. Lescuier 11. Labbe ------12. Le bailly ----13. Le maistre 14. Le bourgois 15. Le chanoine --16. Le marchant

1. Pope 2. Emperowre 3. Cardynall --4. Kynge 5. Patriarke 6. Constable 7. Archebisshop 8. Baroun or kny3t 9. Lady of gret astate 10. Bysshoppe 11. Squyere 12. Abbott 13. Abbesse ----14. Baylly ----15. Astronomere 16. Burgeys 17. Chanoun --18. Marchaunte

1. Papa 2. Imperator 3. Cardinalis 4. Imperatrix 6. Rex 5. Patriarcha 8. § Princeps 7. Archiepiscopus 10. Comes & Baro --9. Episcopus 15. Miles & Armiger 11. Abbas & Prior 12. Abbatissa 13. Iudex 14. Doctor vtriusque Juris --16. Maior 17. Canonicus Regularis 23. Magister in Astronomia --18. Decanus 19. Monialis 30. Mercator 31. Artifex 20. Chartreux 25. Sergant’ ----29. Phisicus --22. Generosa --32. Laborarius 21. Sergeant’ in lawe

---

---

17. Le chartreux 18. Le sergent 19. Le moinne 20. Lusurier + le poure homme 21. Le medecin 22. Lamoreux --23. Cure [= 25 Lille/BL] 24. Le laboureur [= 26 Lille/BL] 25. Ladvocat [= 23 Lille/BL]

19. Chartereux 20. Sergeaunt 21. Monk 22. Vsurere + Pore man 23. Phisician 24. Amerous squyere 25. Gentilwoman amerous 30. Persoun 31. Laborere 26. Man of lawe

Appendices

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--26. Le menestrel [= 24 Lille/BL] ----27. Le cordelier 28. Lenfant 29. Le clerc 30. Le hermite

27. Jouroure 28. Mynstralle --29. Tregetoure 32. Frere menour 33. Chylde 34. Clerke 35. Ermyte

26. Iurour’ 27. Mimus 28. Famulus --24. Frater 33. Infans

Le mort [to the hermit]

Dethe a-3en to the Ermyte

---

Ung roy mort

Kynge liggyng dede & eten with wormes

Conclusio

Lacteur

Machabre the Doctoure

[Author]

---

Lenvoye de translatoure

--

______________

---

34. Heremita

Appendices

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APPENDIX 4: Comparison of characters in the Latin Totentanz,* Lydgate’s Dance of Death and Marchant’s 1485 Danse Macabre edition. * Heidelberg University Library, Cpg 314. (The order of characters in Lydgate’s Dance of Death in MS Ellesmere (EL 26.A.13) and MS Lansdowne 699 and in Marchant’s 1485 Danse Macabre edition has been adapted to allow comparison of characters; spelling follows that of the original labels, with ‘clerical’ characters underlined and female characters in bold.) Latin-German Lydgate MS Ellesmere Lydgate MS Lansdowne Marchant Totentanz (Warren group A) (E) (Warren group B) (L) (1st edition, 1485) ʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊ --Doctor ‘Theutunice’

Verba translatoris Verba auctoris ---

--[Verba auctoris] + ‘Angel’ ---

--Lacteur ---

1. Pope 2. Emperowre --4. Kynge 3. Cardynall 5. Patriarke 6. Constable 7. Archebisshop --9. Lady of gret astate 10. Bysshoppe 8. Baroun or kny3t 12. Abbott 13. Abbesse ----11. § Squyere? 26. Man of lawe ----14. Baylly 15. Astronomere 16. Burgher 17. Chanoun 23. Phisician [cf. Sergeant?] [cf. E9?] 18. Marchaunte 19. Chartereux --21. Monk 20. Sergeaunt

1. Papa 2. Imperator 4. Imperatrix 6. Rex 3. Cardinalis 5. Patriarch 8. § Princeps 7. Archiepiscopus ----9. Episcopus 10. Comes & Baro 11. Abbas & Prior 12. Abbatissa 13. Iudex? 14. Doctor vtriusque Juris 15. § Miles & armiger? 27. Sergeant in law 16. Maior 17. Canonicus regularis --23. Magister in Astronomia -19. Decanus 29. Phisicus ----30. Mercator 20. Chartreux 19. Monialis --25. Sergeant’

1. Le pape 2. Lempereur --4. Le roy 3. Le cardinal 5. Le patriarche 6. Le connestable 7. Larcheuesque ----9. Leuesque 8. Le cheualier 11. Labbe ------10. § Lescuier? 25. Laduocat ----12. Le bailly 13. Le maistre 14. Le bourgois 15. Le chanoine 21. Le medecin ----16. Le marchant 17. Le chartreux --19. Le moinne 18. Le sergent

(= German prologue)

1. Papa 2. Caesar 3. Caesarissa 4. Rex 5. Cardinalis 6. Patriarcha --7. Archiepiscopus 8. Dux --9. Episcopus 10. Comes 11. Abbas ------12. Miles 13. Jurista ----------14. Canonicus 15. Medicus 16. Nobilis 17. Nobilissa 18. Mercator seu cives --19. Monialis -----

Appendices

------20. Mendicus 21. Cocus 22. Rusticus ----------------23. Puer in cunabulo 24. Mater

---

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26. Man of lawe --22. Vsurere +Pore man --31. Laborere 24. Amorous squire 25. Gentilwoman amerous 27. Jouroure 28. Mynstralle --39. Tregetoure 30. Persoun 32. Frere menour 33. Child --34. Clerke 35. Ermyte

21. Sergeant’ in lawe 31. Artificex ------31. Laborarius --26. Generosa

----20. Lusurier +Le poure homme --24. Le laboureur 22. Lamoreux ---

28. Iurour’ 29. Mimus 30. Famulus ----32. Frater 33. Infans ----34. Heremita

--26. Le menestrel ----23. Le cure 27. Le cordelier 28. Lenfant --29. Le clerc 30. Le hermite

Dethe a-3en to the Ermyte

---

Le mort

Kynge liggyng dede & eten with wormes

Conclusio

Ung roy mort

Alius doctor

Machabre the Doctoure [Author]

Lacteur

‘Theutunice’

L’envoy de translatoure --

[Marchant]

(= German epilogue)

______________

Appendices

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APPENDIX 5: Comparison of characters in the Danse Macabre texts in two French manuscripts (Lille ms. 139* and BL Add. MS 38858**), and in the Spanish Dança General de la Muerte***. * Lille, Bibl. publ., ms. 139, as edited in E.P. Hammond, English Verse (1965), pp. 427-35. ** As edited in F. Warren, Dance of Death (1931), pp. 79-96. (The order in MS Ellesmere (EL 26.A.13) and MS Lansdowne 699 has been adapted to allow comparison of characters; spelling follows that of the original labels, with ‘clerical’ characters indicated underlined, female characters in bold.) *** As edited in J. Saugnieux, Les danses macabres de France et d’Espagne (1972), pp. 16582. French danse macabre Dança General de la Muerte ʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊ Lacteur ------1. Le pape 2. Lempereur 3. Le cardinal 4. Le roy 5. Le patriarche ----6. Le connestable 7. Larcheueque 8. Le cheualier 9. Leuesque 10. Lescuier 11. Labbe 12. Le bailly 13. Le maistre 14. Le bourgois 15. Le chanoine 16. Le marchant 17. Le chartreux 18. Le sergent 19. Le moinne 20. Lusurier + le poure homme 21. Le medecin 22. Lamoreux 23. Ladvocat 24. Le menestrel 25. Cure 26. Le laboureur 27. Le cordelier

La muerte (Death) El predicador (The preacher) Bueno e sano consejo (Good and healthy counsel) Primeramenta llama a su dança a dos donsellas (First he [Death] calls to his dance two maidens) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 26. 28. 30. 32. 32.

El padre santo (pope) El enperador (emperor) El cardenal (cardinal) El rrey (king) El patriarca (patriarch) El duque (duke) El arçobispo (archbishop) El condestable (constable) El obispo (bishop) El cauallero (knight) El abad (abbot) El escudero (squire) El dean (deacon) El mercadero (merchant) El arcediano (archdeacon) El abagado (lawyer) El canonigo (canon) El fisico (physician) El cura (curate) El labrador (labourer) El monge (monk) El vsurero (usurer) El frayre (friar) El porter (doorkeeper) La hermitanno (hermit) El contador (comptroller) El diacono (deacon) El recabdador (tax collector) El subdiacono (subdeacon)

Appendices

28. Lenfant 29. Le clerc 30. Le hermite

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33. 34. 35. 36.

El sacristan (sacristan) El rrabi (rabbi) El alfaqui (alfaquí, Islamic theologian) El santero (hermitage keeper)

Le mort [to the hermit]

La muerte (Death)

Ung roy mort

La muerte a los que non nombro (Death to those who are not already named)

Lacteur

Los que han de pasar por la muerte (Those who have to suffer death)

______________

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Appendices

APPENDIX 6: Latin Totentanz verses in Heidelberg University Library Cpg 314.* * As published in H. Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche Totentanz, pp. 320-23; translations by Fr. Jerome Bertram OSB. ʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊ Doctor (Doctor of Divinity) O vos viventes, huius mundi sapientes, cordibus apponite duo verba Christi: ‘Venite!’ nec non et: ‘Ite!’ Per primum ianua vitae iustis erit nota, sed per aliud quoque porta inferi monstratur: sic res diversificatur. Gaudia vel pene sine fine sunt ibi plene. Hinc voce sana vos hortor spernere vana. Tempus namque breve vivendi, postea ‘vae, vae!’ mors geminata parit, sua nulli vis quoque parcit. Fistula tartarea vos iungit in una chorea, qua licet inviti saliunt ut stulti periti. Haec ut pictura docet exemplique figura. O, you wise men of this world, still living, fix in your hearts these two words of Christ, ‘Come!’, not to mention ‘Go!’. By the first word the gate of life will be known to the just; but by the other the gate of Hell is indicated: thus the matter is divided. Complete joys – or pains – are there without end. Therefore in a sane voice I exhort you, avoid what is vain. For the time of living is short, afterwards ‘Woe, woe!’ The second death brings forth, and his own strength delivers nobody. The flute of Hell unites you into one dance, where the learned leap like fools, although unwillingly. As this picture shows you, and the painted example[s]. Papa (Pope) Sanctus dicebar, nullum vivendo verebar. Frivole nunc ducor ad mortem, vane reluctor. I used to be called holy; while living I respected no one. Now I am led in an undignified manner to my death; in vain do I resist. Caesar (Emperor) Culmen imperii vincendo magnificavi. Morte sum victus, non Caesar, non homo dictus. By my conquests I increased the might of the Empire. Now I am conquered by Death, named not Caesar, nor man even. Caesarissa (Empress) Deliciis usa vivens ut Caesaris uxor. Morte confusa nullis modo gaudiis utor. Alive, as the wife of the emperor, I enjoyed delicacies. Now I am confounded by Death, and enjoy no delights.

Appendices

Rex (King) Ut ego rex urbem, sic rexi non minus orbem. Nunc miser in poenis mortis constringor habenis. As I, the king, ruled the city, no less ruled I the world. Now I am wretched and in pain, bound by the reins of Death. Cardinalis (Cardinal) Ecclesiae gratus fui per papam piliatus. Mortis protervam nunc stringor adire catervam. I was pleasing to the Church, and given a hat by the Pope. Yet now I am compelled to attend the impudent throng of Death. Patriarcha (Patriarch) Duplici signatus cruce sum patriarcha vocatus et mortis dirae cogor consortes adire. I am called a patriarch, distinguished by a double cross, but I am compelled to join the companions of dire Death. Archiepiscopus (Archbishop) Doctrina fultis hoc signum praetuli multis metropolitanus, nunc cum vanis ego vanus. I carried this emblem before many who were sustained by my doctrine as Metropolitan; now I am void among the void. Dux (Duke) Nobiles eduxi, quorum dux ipse reluxi, sed nunc, ut adeam, cogor cum morte choream. I led out the nobles, and reflected light as their leader, but now I am compelled to join the dance with Death. Episcopus (Bishop) Praesul egregius venerabar hic quasi dijus [sic]. Heu! nunc distorti praesumunt, me dare morti. As a distinguished prelate I was honoured here as if I were divine [divus?]. Alas! Now the twisting dancers take control of me to give me to Death. Comes (Count) Nobilis imperii comes, in mundo reputatus, morte nunc perii chorisantibus associatus. A noble count of the Empire I was reputed in the world; now I have perished by Death, joined to the dancing throng. Abbas (Abbot) Ut pater arctavi monachos et optime pavi. Nunc egomet stringor et mortis regula cingor. As a father I restrained my monks, and nourished them excellently. Now I am constrained myself, and bound by the Rule of Death. Miles (Knight) Strenuus in armis deduxi gaudia carnis. Contra iura mea ducor in ista chorea. Vigorous in arms, I drew to me the joys of the flesh. Now I am led in this dance, against my rights [or: vows].

-325-

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Jurista (Lawyer) Non iuvat appello de mortis ultimo bello. Succumbunt iura legesque sub ista figura. ‘It does not please me’, I appeal, against the last conflict with Death. Yet Canon and Civil Law yield to this configuration. Canonicus (Canon) In choro cantavi melodias, quas adamavi. Discrepat iste sonus et mortis fistulae tonus. In choir I sang the melodies in which I delighted. The noise and the sound of the pipe of Death are dissonant. Medicus (Physician) Curavi multos iuvenes, mediocres, adultos. Quis modo me curat? Mihi mors contraria iurat. I cured many, both young men, the middle-aged, and the old. Who shall cure me now? Death swears the opposite for me. Nobilis (Nobleman) Armis consortes in vita terrui fortes. Nunc mortis terror me terret, ultimus error. When alive I terrified strong men who were skilled in arms. Now the terror of Death, the last error, terrifies me. Nobilissa (Noblewoman) Plaudere deberem, si ludicra vitae viderem. Fistula me fallit mortis, quae dissona psallit. I ought to applaud, were I to see the follies of life. The pipe of Death deceives me, which sounds discords. Mercator seu cives (Merchant or burgher) Vivere speravi, thesauros elaboravi. Munera mors spernit, ab amicis meque secernit. I hoped to live, I piled up treasures. Death spurns my tribute, and takes me away from my friends. Monialis (Nun) In claustro grata servivi Christo velata. Quid valet orare? Me mors iubet hic chorisare. In the cloister I served Christ, gracious and veiled. What use is it to pray? Death bids me dance here. Mendicus (Beggar) Pauper mendicus, viventi turpis amicus, morti carus erit, illum cum divite quaerit. A poor mendicant, vile friend to the living, shall be dear to Death, who seeks him in company with the rich man. Cocus (Cook) Fercula condita quamvis in mundo paravi. Raptus a vita mortem minime superavi. Although in this world I prepared compound dishes snatched away from life, I failed to overcome death.

Appendices

Appendices

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Rusticus (Peasant) Hic in sudore vixi magnoque labore. Non minus a morte fugio contraria sorte. Here I lived in sweat and great toil. No less do I escape from Death, by a contrary fate. Puer in cunabulo (Child in the cradle) O cara mater, me vir a te trahit ater. Debeo saltare, qui nunquam scivi meare. O dear mother, a black man drags me away from you. I must dance, I who never learnt to walk. Mater (Mother) O fili care, quae te volui liberare, morte praeventa saliendo sumque retenta. O my dear son, I who wished to set you free am forestalled by Death, and kept here fore dancing. Alius doctor (Another Doctor)

(depictus praedicando in opposita parte de contemptu mundi) O vos mortales, perversi mundi sodales, finem pensate que futura considerate, qualibus ad primum tempusque requiritur imum. Pro loco duplatur, ubi fines perpetuatur. Mors horrenda nimis est cunctorum quoque finis. Qualiter aut quando venerit, manet in dubitando. Sic etiam dura noscuntur inde futura propter ignotum remanendi locum quoque totum. Pendet a factis in isto mundo peractis. Ergo peccare desistite, si properare ad finem cupitis optatum, nam bene scitis, quod coelum dignis locus est, sed fit malis ignis. (Another doctor, depicted preaching on the example of the world, at the other end) O you mortals, comrades of the perverse world, think of your end and consider things to come, by which the investigation will be made in the first moment and at the last. There are two results as to the location where the end will be perpetuated. Death is greatly to be feared and is the end of everyone. Yet how and when he will come remains in doubt. However, hard things are certain to result from it because the place to remain is totally unknown; it depends on deeds performed in this world. So desist from sin, if you really desire to make your way towards the end you desire, for you know well that Heaven is the place for the worthy, but fire is made for the wicked. ______________

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Appendices

APPENDIX 7: List of 57 danse macabre characters in New York, Morgan MS M359 (illuminated book of hours, Paris, c.1430-35)* * revised and amended version of Morgan Library’s own list available on CORSAIR website: all figures are in a round medallion and flanked by two corpses, unless indicated otherwise. ʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊʊ f. 119v: Opening Office of the Dead: large miniature of funeral service with marginal scenes; further marginal sequences relating to burial + mass on fols 120r-122v. f. 123r: f. 123v: f. 124r: f. 124v: f. 125r: f. 125v: f. 126r: f. 126v: f. 127r: f. 127v: f. 128r: f. 128v: f. 129r: f. 129v: f. 130r: f. 130v: f. 131r: f. 131v: f. 132r: f. 132v: f. 133r: f. 133v: f. 134r: f. 134v: f. 135r: f. 135v: f. 136r: f. 136v: f. 137r: f. 137v: f. 138r: f. 138v: f. 139r:

Start of danse macabre sequence: doctor at lectern. Pope. Emperor. Cardinal. King. Patriarch. Duke. Archbishop, with 1 corpse (half-medallion). Constable. Abbot. Magistrate? black hat + red gown lined with white. Knight Templar(?) or Knight of St John(?). Canon. Knight (or count?). Benedictine(?) abbot; staff held by L corpse. Scribe or scholar(?) with rolled-up inscribed parchment in L hand. Dominican(?) abbot with staff, dressed in white. Knight in armour. Monk(?) in dark habit with two devils, one holding his habit. Tonsured(?) fat figure, dressed in pink-red robe with ermine ‘bib’ + green sleeves. Abbot with staff, dressed in pink-red gown, black belt + outer cloak with blue Tau cross of the Hospitallers(?) near L shoulder. Lawyer in pink-red gown with white collar + red-orange skull-cap; 1 corpse on L (half-medallion). Priest in white amice, pink stole with crosses + gold fringe, pink/gold collar, grey cap, brown fur(?) with ‘tails’ draped across R arm. Dominican(?) in white/black, hood + gold belt; 1 corpse on L (half-medallion). Bourgeois in red half-long gown lined with fur; gold purse; rolled-up scroll in R hand. Franciscan in dark-grey habit. Lay figure in red hat + hose, pink fur-lined short wide gown, black shoes; gold mace(?) in L hand. Monk/friar in black habit, hood down. Squire(?) in broad black hat (fur?); pink fur-lined short gown; dark grey hose; black belt; smooth brown staff in L hand. Monk/friar in black habit + white outer gown; red book in L hand; 1 corpse on L. Notary(?) with pink turban, short blue gown with fur trim, black belt, pink hose; scroll in L hand + ink containers. Benedictine monk all in black; no belt. Layman in green turban hat with flaps; green collar + green sleeves of undershirt; belted pink short sleeveless outer gown with fur trim; orange-red hose; no attributes.

Appendices

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f. 139v: Trinitarian in white hat, white hood as part of white outer habit; red+blue cross on white ‘collar’. f. 140r: Layman in grey hat; fur-trimmed short pink gown; dark-grey hose; black belt. f. 140v: Alexian or Cellite(?); no sign of tonsure; black short belted garment with hood; fur hem + trim on cuffs; black hose; orange dirk. f. 141r: Merchant(?) seated at low table on which a large black book; red turban hat with flaps; pink belted gown + blue cloak. f. 141v: Tonsured monk/friar (Servite?); black habit + hooded cloak; 1 corpse on L (halfmedallion). f. 142r: Apothecary seated at desk in shop: tiled floor, 2 shelves with red/yellow-striped pots + 2 jugs; on desk open book, coins(?), white square box with unidentified object. f. 142v: Cistercian(?) in in black/white; 1 dark corpse on L (half-medallion). f. 143r: Layman in long pink robe with green collar (fur trim?); pink hat; lidded jar in L arm; 1 corpse on L. f. 143v: Physician with phial in L hand; black skull-cap, white-lined hood, long red-pink robe, blue sleeves; 1 corpse on L. f. 144r: Money-changer in pink hat with flap + blue fur-trimmed short gown; rising from green-covered table/desk with scales, gold coins, dark weights; 1 corpse on R. f. 144v: Monk/friar (unidentified; probably not the short-lived Spanish order of Montjoie) in white robe, black hood with red/white cross in front, grey stole; 1 grey corpse on L. f. 145r: Goldsmith, bearded; in pink robe with fur collar+cuffs; seated at table with plier, coins(?), gold goblet; fireplace on L + large pliers/tongs in foregr.; 1 corpse on R. f. 145v: Cleric in salmon-pink gown, stole, black skull-cap + belt; book in L hand; 1 corpse on L (half-medallion). f. 146r: Tonsured monk/friar in light blue habit; hood edged with white + white collar; no belt. f. 146v: Ploughman, green shirt + pink crumpled hose; in field, hind quarters of horse or ox on R; starry sky; 1 corpse on L. f. 147r: Carthusian monk in white, hands in prayer; flanked by 1 light + 1 dark corpse. f. 147v: Labourer in short white tunic, pink hat + hood, blue hose + grey shoes/boots; black bag with tools on L side; spade on L shoulder; 1 corpse on L. f. 148r: Hermit, bearded, in landscape; pink habit + grey-purple hood; staff in R + white rosary in L hand; 1 grey corpse on L. f. 148v: Man following pack-horse or ass laden with white sacks on R (hind-quarters only); bright-green hat, blue tunic, pink hose, black boot; 1 corpse on L (half-medallion). f. 149r: Cleric in white with pink hood + pink border on almice; clasped book in L hand; 1 dark corpse on L. f. 149v: Blacksmith; bright-green hat, pink tunic + white apron; hammer raised in R hand; grey anvil on brown round ‘dais’; 3 horseshoes on L on floor with tongs + hammer(?) on R; 1 corpse on L (half-medallion). f. 150r: Two acolytes in white, one with tonsure, being led in landscape by 1 corpse on L. f. 150v: Jeweller(?) in corner of furnished room at white-covered table; wearing red turban, fur collar + cuffs, blue jacked with belt; gold goblet + gold/silver coins on table; 1 corpse on L (half-medallion). f. 151r: Infant in cradle, semi-swaddled in pink bands, L arm being pulled on R by 1 corpse.

--oo0oo--

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Appendices

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