"perito" is the true reading, the meaning of the four lines is simply as follows :— "Time passes and death comes; Lost is he who does not do good; We do wrong (in this world) and we hope for good (in the life after death); Time passes and death comes." Cf. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Empedocles on Etna: "We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, That chance will bring us through." Mr. A. M. Hind has kindly directed my attention to a somewhat similar design in a Florentine woodcut by an unknown master of the fifteenth century, reproduced by G. Hirth and R. Muther in their work on Meister-Holzschnitte.144 The woodcut represents a naked boy leaning on a skull with an hour-glass on the trunk of a tree at his head and the inscription: LHORA PASSA. Cf. also the ivory statuette of a boy holding a staff which rests on a skull, and the bronze handle of a bell formed by a boy seated on a skull, described in the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition Catalogue (of Renaissance Italian Art), London, 1912.145 A similar allegory of human life is represented by an alabaster statuette of a naked boy with a skull and a scroll (German, sixteenth century) in the Wallace Collection, London (Gallery X, No. 8). Another allegorical little ivory carving represents a naked infant boy reclining, with his head and arms on a human skull. It is German work of the seventeenth century, signed by an artist named W. F. Moll, about whom nothing else is known.146 Skulls, skeletons, and even death, are not rarely represented or alluded to on modern (notably German) bookplates (ex-libris); but this 144 G. Hirth and R. Muther, Meister-Holzschnitte, München, 1893, Plate 31. 145 P. 58, No. 8, and p. 66, No. 32. 146 It is figured by Julius von Schlosser, Werke der Kleinplastik in der Skulpturensammlung des allerh. Kaiserhauses, Wien, 1910, vol. 2, Plate xlvii. No. 2. is often not specially for the sake of any memento mori significance. Thus, for instance, skulls and skeletons sometimes occur as a kind of professional ornamentation on bookplates of anatomists, anthropologists, surgeons, and physicians. On a medical bookplate (of Dr. P. Janssen) by Peter Janssen, figured by W. von Zur Westen (Exlibris, Bielefeld, 1901, p. 30, fig. 40), Death, holding scythe and hour-glass, is seen shrinking away from a figure of Hygieia, represented as a simple peasant girl, holding the Aesculapian serpent-staff. In some cases the skulls, &c., merely form part of a play on the book-owner's name. Death is alluded to in the bookplate motto, Sine libris vita est mors, or, Vita sine libris est mortis imago. Many are the allegorical devices on modern bookplates in which skulls, skeletons, or representations of Death figure. An elaborate example of the kind is the bookplate of Wilhelm von Gebhardt by Eduard von Gebhardt (W. von Zur Westen, op. cit., p. 29, fig. 39), inspired by Albrecht Dürer's famous copper-plate engraving (1513) of "The Knight, Death and the Devil" (see Fig. 37). Gebhardt represents the knight in question as riding serenely onwards, regardless of the Devil and Death, the latter of whom he has left behind him; in the field is the motto: "Das durch Ergründen des Gesetzes geläuterte Wollen ist Freiheit." A very fine bookplate is one engraved in 1878 by Charles W. Sherborn (1831-1912) for his own use, known as the "Life and Death" plate, and much valued by collectors of ex-libris. Of bookplate-designs having a true memento mori significance a good typical example is the sixteenth-century one (W. von Zur Westen, op. cit., frontispiece) of the Protestant Senator of Nürnberg and patron of artists, Hieronymus von Baumgärtner (armorial, with skull, hourglass and clock-dial as adjuncts), by Barthel Beham (1502-1540). This Baumgärtner (1498-1565) was a collector of books, and in 1538 founded the Nürnberg town-library, to which his own collection was subsequently added. Another is that of Moritz Karl Christian Woog (1684-1760), by M. Wernerin and C. F. Boetius (W. von Zur Westen, op. cit., p. 17, fig. 18), representing Death, seated on a sarcophagus, holding scythe and scales. A seventeenth-century monastic bookplate (illustrated as a separate plate in Count Leiningen's German Bookplates, translated by G. R. Dennis, London, 1901) of Arsenius, Provost and Archdeacon of Chiemsee (1637), represents a skeleton-mitred and holding two croziers-and the arms of the monastery and the abbot. The inscription below is from the Second Book of Samuel, xiv. 14 (Latin Vulgate version): "Omnes morimur et quasi aquae dilabimur in terram." The original copperplate is signed by Lucas Kilian (1579-1637), of Augsburg, who was a pupil of his stepfather, Dominik Custos (1560-1612). A modern bookplate of Alfred Anteshed, by Harold Nelson (illustrated in Harold Nelson His Book of Bookplates, Edinburgh, 1904), represents a standing figure, resplendent in magnificent armour, but with the face of a skeleton; the accompanying motto is: Avise la fin (" Consider the end"). My own interest in memento mori medals, &c., dates from about 1892, when I contributed a short note to the Numismatic Chronicle (Third Series, vol. xii. p. 253) on a curious seventeenth-century medalet in my collection, bearing the inscription, "As soone as wee to bee begunne, We did beginne to be undone," an old English version of Manilius' line, "Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet." About that time I likewise acquired fine specimens of an Italian memento mori medal by Giovanni Boldu, dated 1466, and of the large medal of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1519), with his favourite "terminus" design on the reverse. PART II. ANALYSIS AND ARRANGEMENT. In this part of the book I have attempted to classify the various possible aspects of death and mental attitudes towards the idea of death into the following groups, the headings of which are numbered by Roman numerals. When describing the medals, &c., in Part III., I shall refer, by Roman numerals in brackets, to the group or groups (according to the arrangement in this part) which I think each one illustrates. I. THE SIMPLE MEMENTO MORI IDEA. In this group death is viewed merely as the necessary end of life, the final goal (ultima linea): "Mors ultima linea. rerum est" (Horace, Epist., i. 16, line 79); OaváTO TáνTES opeλóμela (Simonides, Anthol. Graec. Palat., x. 105). Slightly more complicated expressions of the same simple idea are: "Principium moriendi natale est"; "Lex non poena mors"; "Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet," &c. "Zum Leben warst Du erkoren, Zum Sterben wirst Du geboren." In the common memento mori inscription, "Respice finem," the Latin word "finis," like the Greek Téλos and the English "end," may perhaps be taken to mean the final object as well as the final event of life. If this were so, "Respice finem" would be almost equivalent to "Live to die." So also when death is described as the "ultima linea rerum," the word "linea" (doubtless used by Horace as the goal-line in a race) may signify either the limit (end) or the object (goal). "Respice finem" need not, of course, always refer to the end of life; it may refer to the end or final result of any undertaking. Compare such sayings as: "The end crowns the work" ("Finis coronat opus"); the German, "Ende gut, alles gut"; and the Jesuitical, "The end justifies the means," or "Cui licitus est finis, etiam cent media." The saying, "Exitus acta probat," occurs on a rare Thaler (1533) of Gabriel, Count of Ortenburg.147 Several German coins bear the inscription, "Anfang, bedenck das Ende." Many pieces of Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1634-1666), bear his motto, "Alles mit Bedacht," and on one of his interesting Thaler-types the associated words, "Jacta est alea," express the final decision. On a Florentine sandstone chimney-piece, of the early sixteenth-century period, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) is the hexameter: QVID QVID. AGIS. PRVDENTER. AGAS・ (ET) · RESPICE. FINEM. This was also a motto of a Hessian Landgraf in 1583. Compare No. 45 of Aesop's fables, and Ecclesiasticus, vii. 36: "Whatsoever thou takest in hand, remember the end." (Cf. Part III., regarding Dutch jetons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, bearing the motto, In omnibus respice finem.) . Hans Sachs, the sixteenth-century "Meistersänger" of Nürnberg, wrote a poem entitled, Der Tod ein End aller irdischen Ding. In regard to the so-called "death" of all things, compare also "Data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris," and the English equivalent So far is aught from lasting aye That tombes shal have ther dying day." Both of these, together with several other memento mori sayings, are inscribed on a painted wooden memorial tablet of the year 1586 in Adderbury Church, Oxfordshire.148 Cf. also, "Mox ruet et bustum," &c. (Petrarch's Africa). The line "Quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris" is from Juvenal (Satire, x. 146), and has been rendered by C. Badham, in his translation of Juvenal (1831)— "For fate hath fore-ordained its day of doom Not to the tenant only, but the tomb." Cf. "Mors etiam saxis nominibusque venit" (Ausonius); and "Habent sua fata libelli," though the oft-quoted words regarding books were really used by the Roman poet, Terentianus Maurus (De Literis, Syllabis, Pedibus, Metris), in a special sense-"Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli." Compare also Propertius, Opera Omnia (Kuinoel), lib. iii. 2, lines 19 et seq. "Nam neque Pyramidum sumptus ad sidera ducti, Mortis ab extremâ condicione vacant." 147 Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 4323. 148 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, London, 1905, 2nd Series, vol. 20, p. 221. Shakespeare, in his fifty-fifth Sonnet, has made use of the same comparison as Propertius: "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents The last Death, like Time, Truth, Labour, Perseverance, Hope, Faith, Patience (waiting!), and Love, is said to conquer all things. In regard to Perseverance one of the "wise sayings of the seven wise men of Greece" might be quoted: "Nothing is impossible to industry a saying sometimes attributed in antiquity to Periander, tyrant of Corinth, who died about B.C. 585. The motto, Patientia vincit omnia, occurs on coins (1619-20) of Friedrich Christian, Count of Mansfeld.149 of the seven types of "Glockenthaler" (Thaler with the representation of a bell on the reverse), issued in 1643 by Augustus, Duke of Brunswick (New Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel line), has the inscription: TANDEM PATIENTIA VICTRIX ANO 1643. The last "Glockenthaler" were struck when patience was rewarded by the departure of an objectionable garrison. The motto, Amor vincit omnia, has of course occasionally been chosen for a "posie" on wedding rings, betrothal rings, &c. In regard to Time conquering all things one might instance various old sun-dial inscriptions of the kind. G. F. Kunz (Rings for the Finger, 1917) illustrates a sixteenth century finger-ring, in the Albert Figdor collection at Vienna, with a sun-dial and a Greek inscription signifying, "Time removes all things and brings oblivion." In the Apocrypha (First Book of Esdras iv. 41, Revised Version) occurs the famous passage: "Great is Truth and strong above all things"; of which saying the equivalent from the Latin Vulgate is the proverb: "Magna est veritas et praevalet" (often quoted “praevalebit"). Yet, there is also the contrary saying, Vi verum vincitur, which may sometimes temporarily prove true. Here it may be mentioned that the motto, Vincit omnia veritas, or Veritas vincit omnia, gives its name to the Brunswick "WahrheitsThaler," struck by Duke Henry Julius (in 1597 and 1598-probably for the same reason that he issued the so-called "Lügen-Thaler" in 1596 and 1597), which have this motto on one side and on the other side bear the interesting inscription: "Recte faciendo neminem timeas "reminding one of Bismarck's famous saying (6th February, 1888) in the German Reichstag: "Wir Deutsche fürchten Gott, aber sonst nichts auf der Welt." This saying appears on medals of Bismarck (W. Mayer, Oertel), 1888, and on a German medal by O. Lutz, struck in 1914, at the commencement of the Great European War. The motto, "Recte faciendo neminem timeas," occurs also on coins (1715) of Frederick William I of Prussia, and on coins (1760) of John Frederick, Count of Hohenlohe-Neuenstein. A variety of the same motto, "Bene faciendo neminem timemus," occurs on certain coins of John III, King of 149 Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1792. |