ARS MORIENDI. - An ascetical booklet in Latin, very widely circulated in the early days of printing (15th century), with exhortations and prayers, and with illustrations accompanied by captions, for preparation for death. It is not a single work, for under the same title (often expanded) there circulated short treatises or collections of varied content; the original scheme blossomed into an almost "literary genre" of a didactic-devotional kind, intended for high and low alike, though also useful to "clerics." Three distinct works are known to have been disseminated in print, to each of which reworkings and adaptations are connected, both in Latin and in vernacular languages.
1) The first printed A. m. (17 leaves in 4to, with the types of Ulrich Zell, without place or date: Cologne? 1465?) is attributed in the "explicit" to Matthew of Kraków (Pomerania), bishop of Worms (d. 1410). It is a collection of prayers and meditations. The oldest dated manuscript (that of Brussels) is from 1466. It had at least eight other editions from 1470 to 1497 (especially at Strasbourg, Augsburg, Paris), of which the first dated one is from 1478 (Venice, "per Bernardum pictorem et Erhardum Ratdolt de Augusta"), in 20 leaves, with the title Ars bene moriendi. Tractatus brevis et valde utilis de arte et scientia bene moriendi. From this derive the little treatise of Card. Capranica and the Spanish vernacularization of the time, Arte de bien morir.
(property of Degenhart)
2) Entirely different is the A. m. on the theme of the "psychomachia," wholly (text and plates) in woodcut (generally 24 pages or leaves, half text and half figures), widely circulated, especially in Germany, extremely interesting for its expressive and dramatic engravings framed by a spare Latin text, often obscure through excessive concision. It is the assault of Satan with the five temptations (against faith, hope, detachment from earthly goods, resignation in sorrow, humble repentance) upon the dying man, surrounded by his family; but each time an Angel intervenes to drive back the Evil One in the struggle for possession of the soul (cf. Dante, Inf., XXVII, 112-29; Purg., V, 103-108). The evocative little work had at least ten editions between 1460 and 1490. At the same time there are about ten editions (the first dated one is from 1473) of the German vernacular version, three in French (elegant translation by Guillaume Tardif, d. 1495), three or more in Dutch; one English translation is known.
3) Related to the preceding one is a shorter A. m., which circulated (at least five editions) between 1480 and 1505. It is limited to the biblical passages, to which it adapts the figures; it runs to 14 leaves.
From the end of the 15th century the Stimulus timoris Dei ad bene moriendum began to be added to the A. m., describing the pains of hell and of purgatory (sometimes also the Antichrist and the Last Judgment). The Ars bene moriendi is moreover published as an integration of the Ars bene vivendi (recent and less in vogue), following the example of Nicholas of Lyra in the De arte bene vivendi et bene moriendi, and of John Gerson. Eight editions are known of the French L'art de bien vivre et de bien mourir from 1492 to 1540.
The origin of the A. m. is unknown; it has been much studied from the artistic side, but not yet from the literary one. It must have been composed at the end of the 14th century, in the wake of the terrible epidemics that ravaged Europe in that century. Through the work of the Dominican and Franciscan preachers, the "memento mori" was instilled no longer only in the cloisters, but among the masses. The meditation of death became everywhere customary, with the threefold dominant theme: the transience of earthly splendors, the horrid putrefaction of all human beauty and strength, the equality of every condition and age before sovereign death (illustrated by the Danse macabre; v. DANZA MACABRA).
The anonymous little work (the first) has been wrongly attributed to Bishop Matthew of Krakow, or to Cardinal Domenico da Capranica, archbishop of Fermo (d. 1458), who made an adaptation of it (in 1452): the Arte del ben morire (24 leaves in 4to), published at Florence (1477 and 1479), Verona and Venice (1478; many other editions, with a variety of engravings, up to 1513). The original is notably earlier, and may perhaps be traced back, as regards its content, to the German Dominicans Bl. Henry Suso, who in the Book of Eternal Wisdom devotes 4 chapters (part 2, chaps. 21-24) to preparation for death, especially sudden death, and John Nider (v.), whose De arte moriendi was very widely circulated (two editions around 1465). The fearful description of the agony is already found in Innocent III, De contemptu mundi (PL 217, 702 ff.). Gerson, with the Opusculum tripartitum de praeceptis decalogi, de confessione et de arte moriendi (Opera, II, Paris 1606, cols. 258-83; and cf. Sermo III de defunctis, III, col. 1568 ff.) must have given the definitive impulse.
The A. m., already very well known in the first half of the 15th century, with the help of printing penetrated everywhere, in a form reworked by many and enlarged with passages from profane authors in prose and verse, with biblical or patristic quotations, with examples. The De quattuor hominum novissimis of Denis the Carthusian (d. 1471; Opera XLI, p. 511 ff.; cf. Directorium vitae nobilium, Op. XXXVII, p. 530 ff.) is closely connected with it. Besides those cited above, Rodrigo de Santaella, archdeacon of Reyna (in Spanish, 1470), Alberto di Eyb, with two little works of 1477 (Praeparatio ad mortem and the dialogue De morte), Nicola Weidenbusch (Saliceto), under whose name a De arte moriendi enjoyed vogue (posthumous, Paris 1496), and principally Geiler of Kaisersberg, who with his zeal and genius gave new life to the well-known little work, making of it a text of his own to which he added the alphabetical rhythm De dispositione ad mortem, with new engravings, linked their names to the diffusion of the treatise, which they remade or recompiled. The Tractatus de scientia et arte bene moriendi of Bonifazio da Ceva (d. 1517) seems lost. For some time the subject had passed into popular literature: the poem Le Miroir de Mort by George Chastellin (1404-75) develops the three motifs of the meditation of death; La Danse Macabre (Paris 1485, with woodcuts by Guyot Marchant), like its Spanish namesake of the same period, seems to go back to a Latin original. On the other hand, the later treatises, more dense with doctrine, on preparation for death, from those of the bishop of Padua P. Barozzi (d. 1507, De modo bene moriendi, ed. 1531), of Erasmus (1525), of Pietro di Lucca (Dottrina del ben morire, 1520), of Josse di Clichtov (1520), to those of Ludovico Baer (1551) and of Francesco de Hevia (1550), of St. Robert Bellarmine (De arte bene moriendi, Rome 1621) and of V. Caraffa (Peregrino della terra overo apparecchio per la buona morte, Naples 1645), caused the ingenuous A. m. to be forgotten, that pathetic witness to the salutary eschatological shudder of a bygone age.