_Trois vifs et trois morts.--Negro figure of Death.--Danse aux
Avengles._
The first of these subjects, as connected with the Macaber Dance, has been
already introduced at p. 31-33; what is now added will not, it is
presumed, be thought unworthy of notice.
It is needless to repeat the descriptions that have been given by M.
Peignot of the manuscripts in the Duke de la Valliere's catalogue. The
following are some of the printed volumes in which representations of the
_trois vifs et trois morts_ occur.
They are to be found in all the editions of the Danse Macabre that have
already been described, and in the following Horae and other service books
of the catholic church.
"Horae ad usum Sarum," 1495, no place, no printer. 4to. Three Deaths, three
horsemen with hawks and hounds. The hermit, to whom the vision appeared,
in his cell.
"Heures a l'usaige de Rome." Paris. Nicolas Higman, for Guil. Eustace,
1506, 12mo.
"Horae ad usum Traject." 1513. 18mo.
"Breviarium seu horarium domesticum ad usum Sarum." Paris, F. Byrckman,
1516. Large folio. Three Deaths and three young men.
"Horae ad usum Romanum." Paris. Thielman Kerver, 1522. 8vo. And again,
1535. 4to.
A Dutch "Horae." Paris. Thielman Kerver, 1522. 8vo.
"Heures a l'usage de Paris." Thielman Kerver's widow, 1525. 8vo.
"Missale ad usum Sarum." Paris, 1527. Folio. Three horsemen as noblemen,
but without hawks or hounds.
"Enchiridion preclare ecclesie Sarum." Paris. Thielman Kerver, 1528. 32mo.
"Horae ad usum fratrum predicatorum ordinis S. Dominici." Paris. Thielman
Kerver, 1529. 8vo.
"Horae ad usum Romanum." Paris. Yolande Bonhomme, widow of T. Kerver, 1531.
8vo.
"Missale ad usum Sarum." Paris. F. Regnault, 1531. Three Deaths only;
different from the others.
"Prayer of Salisbury." Paris. Francois Regnault, 1531, 12mo.
"Horae ad usum Sarum." Paris. Widow of Thielman Kerver, 1532. 12mo.
"Heures a l'usage de Paris." Francois Regnault, 1535. 12mo.
"Horae ad usum Romanum." Paris. Gilles Hardouyn, 1537. 18mo. The subject is
different from all the others, and very curiously treated.
"Heures a l'usage de Paris." Thielman Kerver, 1558. 12mo.
"Heures a l'usage de Rome." Paris. Thielman Kerver, 1573. 12mo.
"Heures a l'usage de Paris." Jacques Kerver, 1573. 12mo. And again, 1575.
12mo.
In "The Contemplation of Sinners," printed by Wynkyn de Worde. 4to.
All the above articles are in the collections of the author of this
dissertation.
In an elegant MS. "Horae," in the Harl. Coll. No. 2917, 12mo. three Deaths
appear to a pope, an emperor, and a king coming out of a church. All the
parties are crowned.
At the end of Desrey's "Macabri speculum choreae mortuorum," a hermit sees
a vision of a king, a legislator, and a vain female. They are all lectured
by skeletons in their own likenesses.
In a manuscript collection of unpublished and chiefly pious poems of John
Awdeley, a blind poet and canon of the monastery of Haghmon, in
Shropshire, anno 1426, there is one on the "_trois vifs et trois morts_,"
in alliterative verses, and composed in a very grand and terrific style.
NEGRO FIGURE OF DEATH.
In some degree connected with the old painting of the Macaber Dance in the
church-yard of the Innocents at Paris, was that of a black man over a
vaulted roof, constructed by the celebrated N. Flamel, about the year
1390. This is supposed to have perished with the Danse Macabre; but a copy
of the figure has been preserved in some of the printed editions of the
dance. It exhibits a Negro blowing a trumpet, and was certainly intended
as a personification of Death. In one of the oldest of the above editions
he is accompanied with these verses:
CRY DE MORT.
Tost, tost, tost, que chacun savance
Main a main venir a la danse
De Mort, danser la convient,
Tous et a plusieurs nen souvient.
Venez hommes femmes et enfans,
Jeunes et vieulx, petis et grans,
Ung tout seul nen eschapperoit,
Pour mille escuz si les donnoit, &c.
Before the females in the dance the figure is repeated with a second "Cry
de Mort."
Tost, tost, venez femmes danser
Apres les hommes incontinent,
Et gardez vous bien de verser,
Car vous danserez vrayment;
Mon cornet corne bien souvent
Apres les petis et les grans.
Despecte vous legierement,
Apres la pluye vient le beau temps.
These lines are differently given in the various printed copies of the
Danse Macabre.
This figure is not to be confounded with an alabaster statue of Death that
remained in the church-yard of the Innocents, when it was entirely
destroyed in 1786. It had been usually regarded as the work of Germain
Pilon, but with greater probability belonged to Francois Gentil, a
sculptor at Troyes, about 1540. It was transported to Notre Dame, after
being bronzed and repaired, by M. Deseine, a distinguished artist. It was
saved from the fury of the iconoclast revolutionists by M. Le Noir, and
deposited in the Museum which he so patriotically established in the Rue
des petits Augustins, but it has since disappeared. It was an upright
skeleton figure, holding in one hand a lance which pointed to a shield
with this inscription:
Il n'est vivant, tant soit plein d'art,
Ne de force pour resistance,
Que je ne frappe de mon dart,
Pour bailler aux vers leur pitance.
Priez Dieu pour les trespasses.
It is engraved in the second volume of M. Le Noir's "Musee des monumens
Francais," and also in his "Histoire des arts en France," No. 91.
DANSE AUX AVEUGLES.
There is a poetical work, in some degree connected with the subject of
this dissertation, that ought not to be overlooked. It was composed by
one Pierre Michault, of whom little more seems to be known than that he
was in the service of Charles, Count of Charolois, son of Philip le Bon,
Duke of Burgundy. It is intitled "La Danse aux Aveugles," and the object
of it is to show that all men are subject to the influence of three blind
guides, Love, Fortune, and Death, before whom several persons are
whimsically made to dance. It is a dialogue in a dream between the Author
and Understanding, and the respective blind guides describe themselves,
their nature, and power over mankind, in ten-line stanzas, of which the
following is the first of those which are pronounced by Death:
Je suis la Mort de nature ennemie,
Qui tous vivans finablement consomme,
Anichillant a tous humains la vie,
Reduis en terre et en cendre tout homme.
Je suis la mort qui dure me surnomme,
Pour ce qu'il fault que maine tout affin;
Je nay parent, amy, frere ou affin
Que ne face tout rediger en pouldre,
Et suis de Dieu ad ce commise affin,
Que l'on me doubte autant que tonnant fouldre.
Some of the editions are ornamented with cuts, in which Death is
occasionally introduced, and that portion of the work which exclusively
relates to him seems to have been separately published, M. Goujet[138]
having mentioned that he had seen a copy in vellum, containing twelve
leaves, with an engraving to every one of the stanzas, twenty-three in
number. More is unnecessary to be added, as M. Peignot has elaborately and
very completely handled the subject in his interesting "Recherches sur les
Danses des Morts." Dijon, 1826. octavo.