Monday, 17 March 2025

The mediaeval macabre: a new exhibition in Clare

Thanks to L. and his fellowship, I was lucky to attend a new exhibition at a marvellous library in Clare, dedicated to the whole memento mori discourse in the ecclesiastical books and manuscripts of the late Mediaeval—early Modern philosophy era. Neo-Thomism, Scholasticism with lots of the weirdest baroque opulence, and the Grim Reaper doesn’t seem to look that grim anymore.
You who own this little book after I am dead, please say farewell for ever Prytherch.
As I came on Earth naked, so I shall go away naked, I have no idle ambitions, seeing the naked dead.
What could we wish to hope for here since is a penalty to be born and a pain to live, to exist to die.
Man dries up like a flower of the field.
(William Lyndwood, “Constitutiones provinciales ecclesiae anglicanae”)





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