Memento mori : Memento
mori (Latin for 'remember that you [have to] die') is an artistic or symbolic
trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. The concept has its
roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared
in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onwards. The most
common motif is a skull, often accompanied by one or more bones. Often this
alone is enough to evoke the trope, but other motifs such as a coffin,
hourglass and wilting flowers signified the impermanence of human life. Often
these function within a work whose main subject is something else, such as a
portrait, but the vanitas is an artistic genre where the theme of death is the
main subject. The Danse Macabre and Death personified with a scythe as the Grim
Reaper are even more direct evocations of the trope.
In Europe from
the medieval era to the Victorian era :
Philosophy : 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. 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 Ecclesiasticus 7:40, "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.
Visual art : is reduced to three essentials: Life, Death, and Time. Timepieces have
been used to illustrate that the time of the living on Earth grows shorter with
each passing minute. Public clocks 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 flees". Old striking clocks often sported
automata who would appear and strike the hour; some of the celebrated automaton
clocks from Augsburg, Germany, had Death striking the hour. Private people
carried smaller reminders of their own mortality. 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 mourning rings, pendants,
lockets, and brooches. These pieces depicted tiny motifs of skulls, bones, and
coffins, in addition to messages and names of the departed, picked out in
precious metals and enamel. 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.
In classical antiquity : The
philosopher Democritus trained himself by going into solitude and frequenting
tombs. 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". 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. 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". The
Stoic Marcus Aurelius invited the reader (himself) to "consider how ephemeral
and mean all mortal things are" in his Meditations. In some accounts of
the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the
triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of
his own mortality or prompt him to "look behind". A version of this
warning is often rendered into English as "Remember, Caesar, thou art
mortal", for example in Fahrenheit 451.
In Judaism : Several
passages in the Old Testament urge a remembrance of death. In Psalm 90, Moses
prays that God would teach his people "to number our days that we may get
a heart of wisdom" (Ps. 90:12). 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" (Eccl. 7:2). 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" (Is. 40:7).
In early Christianity : The
expression memento mori developed with the growth of Christianity, which
emphasized Heaven, Hell, and salvation of the soul in the afterlife. The
2nd-century Christian writer Tertullian claimed that during his triumphal
procession, a victorious general would have someone (in later versions, a
slave) standing behind him, holding a crown over his head and whispering
"Respice post te. Hominem te memento" ("Look after you [to the
time after your death] and remember you're [only] a man."). Though in
modern times this has become a standard trope, in fact no other ancient authors
confirm this, and it may have been Christian moralizing rather than an accurate
historical report.
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Numismatic Note : On the detailed pictures, the buyer can see the condition of
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WEARABLE RING
MEASUREMENTS & WEIGHT
<> 5.87 grams <>
<> 20.60 mm Inner diameter <>
<>
Condition : Extremely Fine !!!
<>
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They always have some degree of wearing. Please, take care to examine the
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PROVENANCE : Formerly acquired at the ancient art market in Munich, Germany in 1995.
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>>>
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