Memento mori (Latin for "remember (that you have) to die")[ Literally 'remember (that you have) to die', Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, June 2001.] is an artistic symbol or trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death.
The most common motif is a skull, often accompanied by bones. Often, this alone is enough to evoke the trope, but other motifs include a coffin, hourglass, or wilting flowers to signify the impermanence of life. Often, these would accompany a different central subject within a wider work, such as portraiture; however, the concept includes standalone genres such as the vanitas and Danse Macabre in visual art and in sculpture.
Pronunciation and translation
In English, the phrase is typically pronounced , .
Memento is the Active voice Future tense Imperative mood of meminī, 'to remember, to bear in mind', usually serving as a warning: "remember!" Morī is the Present tense infinitive of the deponent verb morior 'to die'.[Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, ss.vv.] Thus, the phrase literally translates as "you must remember to die" but may be loosely rendered as "remember death" or "remember that you die".[ Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, s.v.]
History of the concept
In classical antiquity
The philosopher
Democritus trained himself by going into solitude and frequenting tombs.
[Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book IX, Chapter 7, Section 38 ] Plato's
Phaedo, where the death of
Socrates is recounted, introduces the idea that the proper practice of philosophy is "about nothing else but dying and being dead".
[ Phaedo, 64a4.]
The Stoics of classical antiquity were particularly prominent in their use of this discipline, and Seneca's letters are full of injunctions to meditate on death.[See his Moral Letters to Lucilius.] The Stoic Epictetus told his students that when kissing their child, brother, or friend, they should remind themselves that they are mortal, curbing their pleasure, as do "those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal".[ Discourses of Epictetus, 3.24.] The Stoic Marcus Aurelius invited the reader (himself) to "consider how ephemeral and mean all mortal things are" in his Meditations.[Henry Albert Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy: A Study of Epicurea and Rhetorica in Early Midrashic Writings, E. J. Brill, 1973, p. 95.][Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV. 48.2.]
In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or servus publicus would stand behind or near the triumphator during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to "look behind".[Beard, Mary: The Roman Triumph, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England, 2007. (hardcover), pp. 85–92.] A version of this warning is often rendered into English as "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal", for example in Fahrenheit 451.
In Judaism and early Christianity
Several passages in the Old Testament urge a remembrance of death. In , it is written, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." In Psalm 90, Moses prays that God would teach his people "to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (). In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher insists that "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart" (). In Isaiah, the lifespan of human beings is compared to the short lifespan of grass: "The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the
Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass" ().
The expression memento mori developed with the growth of Christianity, which emphasized Heaven, Hell, Hades and salvation of the soul in the afterlife.
In Europe from the medieval era to the Victorian era
Christian Theology
The thought was then utilized in Christianity, whose strong emphasis on
divine judgment, heaven, hell, and the salvation of the soul brought death to the forefront of consciousness.
[Christian Dogmatics, Volume 2 (Carl E. Braaten, Robert W. Jenson), p. 583] In the Christian context, the
memento mori acquires a moralizing purpose quite opposed to the
nunc est bibendum ("now is the time to drink") theme of classical antiquity. To the Christian, the prospect of death serves to emphasize the emptiness and fleetingness of earthly pleasures, luxuries, and achievements, and thus also as an invitation to focus one's thoughts on the prospect of the afterlife. A biblical injunction often associated with the
memento mori in this context is
In omnibus operibus tuis memorare novissima tua, et in aeternum non peccabis (the
Vulgate's Latin rendering of
Sirach , "in all thy works be mindful of thy last end and thou wilt never sin.") This finds ritual expression in the rites of
Ash Wednesday, when ashes are placed upon the worshipers' heads with the words, "Remember, Man, that you are dust and unto dust, you shall return."
Memento mori has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and by turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife.[See Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Holy Dying.]
Architecture
The most obvious places to look for
memento mori meditations are in funeral art and
architecture. Perhaps the most striking to contemporary minds is the
transi or
cadaver tomb, a tomb that depicts the decayed
Dead body of the deceased. This became a fashion in the tombs of the wealthy in the fifteenth century, and surviving examples still offer a stark reminder of the vanity of earthly riches. Later,
Puritan in the colonial United States frequently depicted winged skulls, skeletons, or
snuffing out candles. These are among the numerous themes associated with skull imagery.
Another example of memento mori is provided by the chapels of bones, such as the Capela dos Ossos in Évora or the Capuchin Crypt in Rome. These are chapels where the walls are totally or partially covered by human remains, mostly bones. The entrance to the Capela dos Ossos has the following sentence: "We bones, lying here bare, await yours."
Visual art
Timepieces have been used to illustrate that the time of the living on Earth grows shorter with each passing minute. Public
would be decorated with mottos such as
ultima forsan ("perhaps the last" hour) or
vulnerant omnes, ultima necat ("they all wound, and the last kills"). Clocks have carried the motto
tempus fugit ("time flies"). Old striking clocks often sported
automaton who would appear and strike the hour; some of the celebrated automaton clocks from
Augsburg, Germany, had Death striking the hour. In the private sphere, some people carried smaller reminders of their own mortality. For example, Mary, Queen of Scots, owned a large watch carved in the form of a
silver skull, embellished with the lines of
Horace, "Pale death knocks with the same tempo upon the huts of the poor and the towers of Kings."
In the late 16th and through the 17th century, memento mori jewelry was popular. Items included ,
During the same period, there emerged the artistic genre known as vanitas, Latin for "emptiness" or "vanity". Especially popular in Holland and then spreading to other European nations, vanitas paintings typically represented assemblages of numerous symbolic objects such as human skulls, guttering candles, wilting flowers, soap bubbles, butterflies, and hourglasses. In combination, vanitas assemblies conveyed the impermanence of human endeavours and of the decay that is inevitable with the passage of time. See also the themes associated with the image of the skull. The 2007 Screen printing by the street-artist Banksy "Grin Reaper" features the Grim Reaper with acid-house smiley face sitting on a clock demonstrating death awaiting us all.
Literature
Memento mori is also an important literary theme. Well-known literary meditations on death in English prose include Sir
Thomas Browne's
Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial and
Jeremy Taylor's
Holy Living and Holy Dying. These works were part of a
Jacobean era melancholia that marked the end of the
Elizabethan era. In the late eighteenth century, literary
elegy were a common genre;
Thomas Gray's
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and
Edward Young's
Night Thoughts are typical members of the genre.
In the European devotional literature of the Renaissance, the Ars Moriendi, memento mori had moral value by reminding individuals of their mortality.[Michael John Brennan, ed., The A–Z of Death and Dying: Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, , s.v. "Memento Mori", p. 307 f and s.v. "Ars Moriendi", p. 44]
Music
Apart from the genre of requiem and funeral music, there is also a rich tradition of
memento mori in the
Early Music of Europe. Especially those facing the ever-present death during the recurring
bubonic plague from the 1340s onward tried to toughen themselves by anticipating the inevitable in
chants, from the simple
Geisslerlieder of the
Flagellant movement to the more refined cloistral or courtly songs. The lyrics often looked at life as a necessary and God-given vale of tears with death as a ransom, and they reminded people to lead sinless lives to stand a chance at
Last Judgment. The following two Latin stanzas (with their English translations) are typical of
memento mori in medieval music; they are from the
virelai Ad Mortem Festinamus of the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat from 1399:
Danse macabre
The
danse macabre is another well-known example of the
memento mori theme, with its dancing depiction of the Grim Reaper carrying off rich and poor alike. This and similar depictions of Death decorated many European churches.
Gallery
File:MANNapoli 109982 roue de la fortune memento mori.jpg|Ancient Rome mosaic representing the Rota Fortunae which, as it turns, can make the rich poor and the poor rich; in effect, both states are very precarious, with death never far and life hanging by a thread: when it breaks, the soul flies off. And thus all are made equal. ( Collezioni Pompeii. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli)
File:Le Transi de René de Chalon (Ligier Richier).jpg|Prince of Orange René of Châlon died in 1544 at age 25. His widow commissioned sculptor Ligier Richier to represent him in the Cadaver Tomb of René of Chalon, which shows him offering his heart to God, set against the painted splendour of his former worldly estate. (Church of Saint-Étienne, Bar-le-Duc)
File:French - Pendant with a Monk and Death - Walters 71461.jpg|French 16th/17th-century ivory pendant, Monk and Death, recalling mortality and the certainty of death (Walters Art Museum)
File:Post-Medieval ring (FindID 468822) (cropped).jpg| Memento mori ring, with enameled skull and "Die to Live" message (between 1500 and 1650, British Museum, London)
File:Young Man with a Skull, Frans Hals, National Gallery, London.jpg|Frans Hals, Young Man with a Skull,
File:Momento mori in the form of a small coffin, probably Southern Germany, 1700s, wax figure on silk in a wooden coffin - Museum Schnütgen - Cologne, Germany - DSC09943.jpg| Memento mori in the form of a small coffin, 1700s, wax figure on silk in a wooden coffin (Museum Schnütgen, Cologne, Germany)
File:Brooch, mourning (AM 70980-3).jpg|Mourning brooch with plaited hair, 1843 (Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, New Zealand)
File:Alarm clock, mounted on model of coffin.jpg|Alarm clock, mounted on model of coffin, probably English, 1840–1900 (Science Museum, London)
File:Harmen Steenwijck - Vanitas Still-Life - WGA21768.jpg| is a Dutch vanitas which follows the memento mori theme.
File:Hans Holbein the Younger - The Ambassadors - Google Art Project.jpg|Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors includes a distorted image of a skull across the bottom of the painting.
The salutation of the Hermits of St. Paul of France
Memento mori was the salutation used by the Hermits of St. Paul of France (1620–1633), also known as the Brothers of Death.
[F. McGahan, "Paulists", The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, s.v. Paulists] It is sometimes claimed that the
Trappists use this salutation, but this is not true.
[E. Obrecht, "Trappists", The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, s.v. Trappists]
In Puritan America
Colonial American art saw a large number of
memento mori images due to
Puritan influence. The Puritan community in 17th-century North America looked down upon art because they believed that it drew the faithful away from God and, if away from God, then it could only lead to the devil. However, portraits were considered historical records and, as such, they were allowed. Thomas Smith, a 17th-century Puritan, fought in many naval battles and also painted. In his self-portrait, we see these pursuits represented alongside a typical Puritan
memento mori with a skull, suggesting his awareness of imminent death.
The poem underneath the skull emphasizes Thomas Smith's acceptance of death and of turning away from the world of the living:
Why why should I the World be minding, Therein a World of Evils Finding. Then Farwell World: Farwell thy jarres, thy Joies thy Toies thy Wiles thy Warrs. Truth Sounds Retreat: I am not sorye. The Eternall Drawes to him my heart, By Faith (which can thy Force Subvert) To Crowne me (after Grace) with Glory.
Mexico's Day of the Dead
Much
memento mori art is associated with the
Mexican culture Day of the Dead, including skull-shaped candies and bread loaves adorned with bread "bones".
This theme was also famously expressed in the works of the Mexican engraver José Guadalupe Posada, in which people from various walks of life are depicted as skeletons.
Another manifestation of memento mori is found in the Mexican "Calavera", a literary composition in verse form normally written in honour of a person who is still alive, but written as if that person were dead. These compositions have a comedic tone and are often offered from one friend to another during Day of the Dead.[Stanley Brandes. "Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond". Chapter 5: The Poetics of Death. John Wiley & Sons, 2009]
Contemporary culture
Roman Krznaric suggests
memento mori is an important topic to bring back into our thoughts and belief system; "Philosophers have come up with lots of what I call 'death tasters' – thought experiments for seizing the day."
These thought experiments are powerful to get us re-oriented back to death into current awareness and living with spontaneity. Albert Camus stated "Come to terms with death, thereafter anything is possible." Jean-Paul Sartre expressed that life is given to us early, and is shortened at the end, all the while taken away at every step of the way, emphasizing that the end is only the beginning every day.
Similar concepts across cultures
In Buddhism
The Buddhist practice
Maranasati meditates on death. The word is a Pāli compound of
maraṇa 'death' (an
Indo-European cognate of Latin
mori) and
sati 'awareness', so very close to
memento mori. It is first used in early Buddhist texts, the
Sutta Pitaka of the Pāli Canon, with parallels in the āgamas of the "Northern" Schools.
In Japanese Zen and samurai culture
In Japan, the influence of
Zen Buddhist contemplation of death on indigenous culture can be gauged by the following quotation from the classic treatise on
samurai ethics,
Hagakure:
The Way of the Samurai is, morning after morning, the practice of death, considering whether it will be here or be there, imagining the most sightly way of dying, and putting one's mind firmly in death. Although this may be a most difficult thing, if one will do it, it can be done. There is nothing that one should suppose cannot be done.
In the annual appreciation of cherry blossom and fall colors, hanami and Leaf peeping, it was philosophized that things are most splendid at the moment before their fall, and to aim to live and die in a similar fashion.
In Tibetan Buddhism
In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a mind training practice known as
Lojong. The initial stages of the classic Lojong begin with 'The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind', or, more literally, 'Four Contemplations to Cause a Revolution in the Mind'. The second of these four is the contemplation on impermanence and death. In particular, one contemplates that;
-
All compounded things are impermanent.
-
The human body is a compounded thing.
-
Therefore, death of the body is certain.
-
The time of death is uncertain and beyond our control.
There are a number of classic verse formulations of these contemplations meant for daily reflection to overcome our strong habitual tendency to live as though we will certainly not die today.
Lalitavistara Sutra
The following is from the Lalitavistara Sūtra, a major work in the classical Sanskrit canon:
The Udānavarga
A very well-known verse in the Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan canons states this:
Shantideva, Bodhicaryavatara
Shantideva, in the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra 'Bodhisattva's Way of Life' reflects at length:
In more modern Tibetan Buddhist works
In a practice text written by the 19th-century Tibetan master
Dudjom Lingpa for serious
meditators, he formulates the second contemplation in this way:
["Foolish Dharma of an Idiot Clothed in Mud and Feathers, in 'Dujdom Lingpa's Visions of the Great Perfection, Volume 1', B. Alan Wallace (translator), Wisdom Publications".]
An oral commentary by the translator is available on YouTube
The contemporary Tibetan master, Yangthang Rinpoche, in his short text 'Summary of the View, Meditation, and Conduct':[The English text is available here. The Tibetan text is available here. Oral Commentary by a student of Rinpoche, B. Alan Wallace, is available here. ]
The Tibetan Canon also includes copious materials on the meditative preparation for the death process and intermediate period bardo between death and rebirth. Amongst them are the famous "Tibetan Book of the Dead", in Tibetan Bardo Thodol, the "Natural Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo".
In Islam
The "remembrance of death" (,
Tadhkirat al-Mawt; deriving from italic=no,
tadhkirah, Arabic for
memorandum or
admonition), has been a major topic of Islamic spirituality since the time of the Islamic prophet
Muhammad in
Medina. It is grounded in the Qur'an, where there are recurring injunctions to pay heed to the fate of previous generations.
[For instance, sura "Yasin", 36:31, "Have they not seen how many generations We destroyed before them, which indeed returned not unto them?".] The
hadith literature, which preserves the teachings of Muhammad, records advice for believers to "remember often death, the destroyer of pleasures."
Some
Sufism have been called "ahl al-qubur," the "people of the graves," because of their practice of frequenting graveyards to ponder on mortality and the vanity of life, based on the teaching of Muhammad to visit graves.
devotes to this topic the last book of his "The Revival of the Religious Sciences".
[Al-Ghazali on Death and the Afterlife, tr. by Timothy Winter. Cambridge, Islamic Texts Society, 1989.]
Iceland
The Hávamál ("Sayings of the High One"), a 13th-century Icelandic compilation poetically attributed to the god
Odin, includes two sections – the Gestaþáttr and the Loddfáfnismál – offering many
Gnomic poetry proverbs expressing the memento mori philosophy, most famously Gestaþáttr number 77:
See also
External links
