Death

DEATH. - It is the end of natural or physical life and comes about through the separation of the two constitutive principles of man: the soul and the body. Through disorders, whether natural or violent, arising in the essential parts of the human organism, the body becomes unsuited to the vivification of the soul, and then the separation occurs. Thus man ceases to exist, he dies. The body then dissolves further into its many constitutive elements.

I. DOGMATIC THEOLOGY

In Sacred Scripture death is described as a dissolution (Phil. 1:25; II Tim. 4:6), as laying aside one's tabernacle (II Pt. 1:14), a going out from the body: the body returns to the earth, whence it had come (Gen. 3:19; Ps. 145:4; Eccles. 12:7); the soul, before the Redemption, was gathered to those who had previously departed this life in Sheol, as is said in the Old Testament (Gen. 15:15; 25:8; 49:29; v. LIMBO. II. DESCENT OF CHRIST INTO L.); after the Redemption the soul, if it is worthy, enters into Paradise (v. Apoc. 14:13). In Sacred Scripture death is also called dormitio (entering into sleep): but it must be understood that only of the family, brought to Rome, where he was handed over to the rector of the Catechumens and subsequently, at the expense of Pius IX (whence the first name of Pius), admitted to the College of St. Peter in Chains, setting out on the ecclesiastical career.

The press of Turin, that of France, England and other countries seized the occasion for a violent campaign against the intolerance of the Church and the temporal power of the popes. Having occupied the legations of the body falls asleep, not the soul (cf. Deut. 31:16; Jn. 11:11-12; I Cor. 7:39; 11:30; 15:18; I Thess. 4:12 ff.; II Pt. 3:4).

According to Catholic doctrine, death is incurred originally because of the sin of the first parents. This is a traditional and explicit teaching of the Church, drawn directly from Revelation. Death was threatened to the first parents as the penalty for the transgression of a divine precept, and since the transgression occurred, the threat had its effect (Gen. 2:17; 3:3). Thus death entered the world because of sin (Wis. 2:23-24; Jn. 8:44; Rom. 5:12; I Cor. 15:21-22; Heb. 9:27). Not that death is not natural to man, a creature complex in his bodily organism, naturally subject to corruption; but he would have been preserved from it by means of a preternatural gift of God. Providence would, that is, have preserved man from this fatal outcome toward which the human organism naturally tends, communicating to the soul an unfailing miraculous energy, capable of instilling in the body a perpetual vigor and preserving it from violent death. Thus man "was able not to die," as St. Augustine puts it.

Such a benefit appears fitting to the liberality of God, who, having created a being composed of spirit and matter, such as man is, and having moreover elevated him to share in His friendship through Grace, had in some way to confer upon the spirit dominion over matter, so that it might preserve it from illnesses, from old age and from the pains and sorrows of dissolution, which weigh upon the spirit. But the benefit was conditioned upon the submission of man's will to the will of God, and would have been a precious element of man's total harmony, having its root in the right relationship of subjection of the creature to God. Through the culpable loss of this benefit, death, although being a natural phenomenon as regards the body, came to take on the character of a penalty, that is, it became at the same time a natural fact and a punishment. The punishment of original sin in fact consisted in depriving man, who had withdrawn himself from the will of God, of the gratuitous preternatural gifts which rendered the body and all the other natural forces subject to the soul. By such a punishment man's life on earth became precarious and dominated by the fear of death, being always under its threat. Because of this historical connection between sin and death, sin itself is called the death of the soul, and the analogy of death vividly recalls to mind the effects of sin. Christ, who came to earth to destroy sin (and destroys it continually in souls by means of the Sacraments), will also destroy death, calling men to the Resurrection.

With the instant of death the state of trial for man comes to an end, and he thus reaches his definitive end; the time of merit and demerit ceases: the just man can no longer sin, nor can the wicked man be converted. This is a doctrine constantly taught by the Church, which in the past condemned Origen and his followers who, inspired by pagan myths, taught the recommencement (ἀποκατάστασις) of all things, and therefore also of man's earthly period; as if there were no definitive state for souls even after death; and it no less energetically condemns the modern theosophists, who teach the transmigration of souls, according to the fantastic law of "Karma." This error takes away from earthly life all its value, deluding man into thinking he can do in other existences the good he must accomplish in this life, against the express teaching of the Gospel, which commits one in this life to the definitive conquest of eternity (Lk. 16:19-20; Mt. 25:31-32; II Cor. 5:10).

II. CANON LAW AND THE LEGAL EFFECTS OF DEATH

The end of the canonical personality of the baptized occurs with death, that is, when all juridical relationships are extinguished. However, it is not always possible to obtain the plena probatio of a person's death, and then the Church, although she does not know the institution of the legal presumption of death, nor has a regulation of the institution of the simple presumption or praesumptio hominis, provides certain norms, especially for the purpose of allowing a new marriage to the surviving spouse.

Already in certain passages of Gratian's Decree and of the Decretals of Gregory IX it is expressly affirmed that no absence, however prolonged, can be sufficient to introduce a juridical presumption of the death of the vanished spouse and, consequently, to authorize the dissolution of the marriage: the surviving spouse's passage to a new marriage cannot be permitted until certum nuncium recipiat de morte viri or ei firma certitudine constet quod ab hac vita migraverit coniux eius (c. 1, C. XXXIV, q. 1; c. 19, X, v. 1; c. 2, X, v. 21); a principle that was later vigorously confirmed by the Council of Trent (sess. XXIV, De sacram. Matrimonii, can. V).

There was much dispute among canonists as to whether public repute sufficed to pronounce the declaratory judgment of the death of an absent person, or whether a means of proof worthy of greater credence was necessary, such as the deposition of one or more witnesses; what nevertheless constituted an indisputable point was the necessity of moralis certitudo of the death of the vanished person. Therefore, although the simple probabilis causa credendi mortem coniugis was not held sufficient to authorize the dissolution of the marriage and the passage of the surviving spouse to a new marriage, on the other hand it was not necessary to reach absolute physical certainty: a degree of probability of the absent person's death was considered sufficient, reached through testimonial and circumstantial evidence, such as to arouse the moral certainty of his actual decease.

Among the pontifical instructions, of particular importance is the Matrimonii vinculo, issued on 13 May 1868, which constitutes the principal canonical source of the institution: there, while solam coniugis absentiam atque omnimodum ius silentium satis argumentum non esse ad mortem comprobandam is reaffirmed, it is established that in the case of the absence of a spouse it is possible to arrive at the dissolution of the bond and, consequently, to permit the surviving spouse the passage to a new marriage, if a proof, at least morally certain, of the death of the vanished person has been reached; in other words, the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence to obtain moral certainty is declared.

In the CIC (can. 1053), mention is made of a possible ... permissio transitus ad alias nuptias ob praesumptam coniugis mortem... The interpretation of the norm, however, must be given by also considering another provision contained in can. 1069 § 2, in which a spouse is forbidden to contract a new marriage antequam de prioris validitate aut solutione legitime et certo constiterit, since otherwise one would have to suppose that the legislator fell into clear contradiction. By relating the prescription of can. 1053 to that of § 2 of can. 1069, one arrives at the logical conclusion that the expression adopted by can. 1053 is equivalent to the traditional omnimodo indubitata certitudo moralis of death. Therefore, in the absence of an authentic document, the ecclesiastical authority may declare the death on the basis of a simple presumption, that is, on a conviction determined by reasoning: it is obvious that such a presumption will fall before any eventual contrary proof, of which there remains, if not the probability, the abstract possibility.

Naturally the eventual second marriage will be revealed to be non-existent if the presumed dead person turns out to be still alive; if, instead, his actual death turns out to have occurred at a date posterior to the second marriage, the convalidation (v.) of this may be obtained, provided that the consent of the parties is renewed or at least still subsists. In any case, by virtue of the principle of favor matrimonii, the marriage that the spouse of the vanished person may eventually have contracted, despite the state of uncertainty about the fate of the absent person, is not considered by canon law to be forthwith null; can. 1014 of the CIC provides that in doubt the validity of the marriage must be held, and therefore the proof of invalidity must be complete, full and indisputable, for a declaration of nullity of the second marriage to be proceeded to.

Moreover, even after the promulgation of the CIC, the instruction Matrimonii vinculo of 1868 has maintained its normative value, as is evident from the practice of the S. Congregation of the Sacraments, which, in fact, on 1 July 1929, following the Concordat stipulated between the Holy See and the Italian Government, published an instruction in which, at no. 48, it is laid down that « in the case of the presumed death of one of the spouses, if it concerns soldiers missing in the Great War and there is a judgment of the civil tribunal that declared the presumed death, the Ordinary shall abide by the instruction of the S. Office of 1868 and, the new marriage being permitted, this will have the ordinary course and will be reported to the civil registry with due notice. Outside this case the practice for civil effects must be referred to the Secretariat of State ». Now, if the marriage has been dissolved or must be presumed dissolved, the Italian tribunal having issued, following an evidentiary examination, a declaratory judgment of presumed death, the new marriage may forthwith be transcribed; but, if no judgment has been issued, logically one cannot proceed to the transcription of that marriage. In fact, according to the concordatory legislation, for the State those religious marriages are not transcribable in which for one or both parties there exists a previous civil marriage or in which interdiction for mental infirmity has been pronounced; nor, on the other hand, is there any norm of state law that recognizes in ecclesiastical bodies the power to issue rescripts of presumption of death that have the efficacy of a judgment of the civil tribunal.

Lorenzo Spinelli

III. THE MEDICO-LEGAL AND MEDICO-MORAL POINT OF VIEW REGARDING DEATH

The fact of the cessation of life and of the proximate circumstances that precede and accompany it gives rise first of all to the problem of apparent death.

Starting from a negative definition of death, one may say that it is the absence of all those marks that constitute the state of life for the individual under examination; and considering here only the death of man, one may say that it has occurred when there no longer remains any sign of the functions essential to his corporeal existence.

In relation to the need that every living being has for plastic and energetic substances, exchange (metabolism) becomes the characteristic and the means of life, and the absence of exchange one of the distinctive signs of death. It should be noted that in the corpse an intense metabolism likewise takes place, the means of life of a myriad of living forms; but that fervor of exchanges, oxidations, reductions, hydrolyses, cleavages and reconstructions has taken on an entirely different orientation and purpose: they are no longer to the benefit of the organism that hosts them, but to its harm and to the advantage of other lives. If, therefore, we posit as essential functions of exchange respiration, circulation and the activity of the nervous system, their definitive cessation may be taken as a sure sign of death. These three factors and signs of life are so closely linked to one another in the equilibrium of the vital functions that the prolonged failure of one leads without fail to the ruin of the others. There exists, however, among them a scale of resistance in direct relation to their hierarchy of biological and functional dignity, so that they show different resistance to the assault of death: first the function and the life of the nervous system fail, then that of respiration, and lastly, as the most resistant, that of circulation. Death therefore proceeds by stages in the organism; it is never a univocal phenomenon (except in the case of instantaneous destruction of it by traumatic annihilation); but, correspondingly to the different resistance of the vital processes that characterize life, it invades and conquers with a succession of phenomena, with a progressiveness more or less rapid. Hence the difficulty of ascertaining death in its first steps, of being able to grasp the exact moment in which the organism absolutely ceases to live.

From the medico-legal point of view, and the medico-pastoral one with regard to the administration of certain Sacraments (Baptism, Extreme Unction), the most important and most serious problem connected with the study of death is that of its unequivocal ascertainment, between the doubt of its reality and that of its appearance. It is well known indeed how periodically public opinion is stirred and excited by bringing back to the fore the problem of apparent death and the eventuality of being buried alive; and there exists a whole anguished literature on this subject. A tendency, upheld also by modern authors, among them Ferreres and Geniesse, admits that: 1) no one dies at that moment held to be the last of life, but after a period more or less long; 2) in this time, which elapses between the presumed death and the real one (apparent or intermediate or relative death, according to d'Halluin), there persists a vitality and a potential functionality of the organic elements, such as to permit anew, if adequately stimulated, a momentary or even definitive return of the whole organism to full life even after several days, spontaneously or, more easily, through the action of particular means of resuscitation; 3) during such apparent death the functions of respiration and circulation may be completely suspended, while the internal and external consciousness of the environment may instead remain intact; 4) in the present state of our science, there exists no sign or complex of signs such as to give certainty of real death, except incipient cadaveric putrefaction, detectable from the appearance of green spots on the skin of the abdomen. Admissions evidently such as to arouse the gravest concerns in everyone, with the conclusion that a high percentage of individuals (ranging between the 1% of some and the frightful 33% of others; Geniesse is content with a ratio of 5 per thousand!) has the terrifying fate of being buried alive.

Without doubt, however, the points set out above appear dictated more by exasperated fantasies than by firm and sure biological knowledge. Indeed: it is true that the complete death of the organism, in every one of its parts, does not correspond with the moment in which the individual appears to breathe his last breath; but we are not concerned that groups of cells or even tissues of secondary functional dignity (hair, nails, epidermis, elements of the white series of the blood) persist in a supreme attempt at life, if a well-established complex of symptoms assures us that the basal functions of life — respiration, circulation, vitality of the nervous system — are by now comprehensively and definitively compromised. It is repugnant to biology to admit that the elements of the nervous system, so greedy for oxygen and in need of a perfect circulation, even in the state of functional rest, can keep themselves alive, not for hours but indeed for days, in the complete arrest of respiration and bathed in a dead pool of completely stagnant blood and tissue lymph. Without doubt, in such conditions the death of the nervous elements supervenes rapidly and irreparably, and it is absurd to think that the extreme survival of less noble and therefore more resistant tissues can give life back to the former, by now in full degeneration.

It may also be admitted that the soul has not yet abandoned that body on which death by now rapidly marks its stages (and even on this point, as is well known, the opinion of philosophers is not in agreement, since one may admit, with Mercier, the existence of lower vital principles, animators of the partial compounds and of the lower organizations that come to be formed in the corpse); but this "extreme presence" of the soul cannot suffice to bring back to life elements by now rendered incapable of life.

This holds for that section of the nervous system entrusted with the functions of vegetative life, by now become incapable of any coordination of the respiratory and circulatory apparatuses, a condition sine qua non for life; even more serious appears the absurdity that the higher nervous system, a far more delicate instrument of our mental activity, could keep itself in such conditions as to permit this individual, insensible to stimuli, motionless in his muscles, in his respiratory acts, in the motions of the heart, in the stagnation of his circulating fluids, to preserve relations of consciousness with the environment that surrounds him, so as to follow, mute, nailed to his bed by the inertia of his muscles, the terrifying preparations for his own coffining.

As regards, lastly, the question of the ascertainment of death, it is true that there is no single and unequivocal sign of its occurrence, with the exception of the putrefaction of the body; but it is equally true that a complex of signs can always be detected from the various organs and the various functions, capable, taken together, of giving certainty of real death. It is quite clear that the ascertainment of this is still always a matter of grave moment and represents a delicate act of medical competence, not to be entrusted to just anyone; the law wisely and sufficiently prescribes that burial be carried out not earlier than 24 hours from the moment of the presumed death (48 in cases of sudden death or if there are doubts of apparent death), and in any case not before the decease has been verified by a "necroscopic" physician. If all this is not put into practice, the case of the buried alive can well occur, or even a host of buried alive, when (wars, cataclysms, epidemics, etc.)

a great number of persons are struck down simultaneously, and ignorance, carelessness, the practical impossibility of examining individuals one by one, through an erroneous presumption lump together the truly dead with those believed to be such. Such an "erroneous presumption of death" appears to be the chief culprit behind the incredible statistics of the buried alive.

Moreover, the existence cannot be denied of individuals who present a state so simulating death as to seem by now truly deprived of life upon an examination made with reasonable accuracy by an expert person. There undoubtedly exist certain diseases, far fewer in number than is believed, which can lead to a state simulating real death more or less completely and from which it is possible, at times, to recall the individual to life, with lengthy and complex maneuvers. Thus syncope, asphyxia, the arrest of respiration and of cardiac activity from the action of lightning or electric current, freezing, accidents from narcosis, the algid state of cholera, states of extreme congenital weakness or of atrophy or atrepsia of newborns or infants, etc. In every case, however, these are very serious incidents, a true prelude to death, from which the individual can be saved only rarely and not easily and, if at all, always at the price of timely, skillful, prolonged work by the physician; for them the case of spontaneous resolution is excluded, the subsequent awakening in the tomb is fantastic; the persistence of the arrest of respiration and of the heart, the futility of prolonged attempts at resuscitation, mark with certainty the occurrence of absolute death. In a particular way the attention and imagination of laypeople dwell on the cases of apparent death linked to certain neuro-psychotic states (catalepsy, lethargy, etc.). It must be said that precisely in this field these are truly very rare cases; moreover, precisely here, the mistaken impression of death is easily unmasked by a suitable ascertainment.

It can therefore be affirmed that an ascertainment of death that gives full certainty is always possible, provided it is made by a skillful person and using a complex of signs detectable from the different functions of the organism. Here is a simple exposition of the various signs most easily ascertainable: a) From respiration: total and lasting arrest (no visibility or audibility of respiratory movements, absence of in-expiratory current verified with the old test of the candle or the mirror or with the small tuft of cotton wool placed before the nostrils). b) From circulation: the silence of the heartbeats upon prolonged auscultation or upon direct palpation through the abdominal wall, particularly in newborns; the non-formation of blisters in relation to burns made on the skin; the failure of the sclera to turn green after injection of fluorescein; the failure of the veins to become turgid after ligation of a limb; cadaveric hypostases, spots similar to bruises that appear in the most dependent parts after 3-6 hours from death; the absence of reddening, swelling, lacrimation of the eye after instillation of irritating substances (ether, 5% dionine). c) From the activity of the nervous system: absence of the various reflexes carefully tested (of sneezing, of the patella, abdominal, cremasteric, plantar); in particular the corneal reflex, quite sensitive and easy to provoke by lightly stimulating the anterior part of the eyeball (the response consists in the contraction of the eyelids or blinking). d) The eye, in particular, becomes rich in signs indicative of the occurrence of death: the dilation of the pupil and its immobility under the action of a light ray; the deformability of the pupil, which in the living is constantly circular, upon pressing on the contour of the sclera (this is a sign of high value, because it is early and certain); the clouding and drying of the cornea, which becomes wrinkled and presents black spots. e) Various signs: cooling of the body (about one degree per hour); cadaveric rigidity, which begins to manifest itself not earlier than 3-6 hours after death (hence the common haste to lay out the corpse is useless); the absence of response to mechanical, thermal, electrical muscular stimulation; finally, the greenish skin spots (a combination of hydrogen sulfide of putrefactive origin and the hemoglobin of the blood), which appear between the 48th and 62nd hour, first of all on the region of the lower right quadrant of the abdomen; the putrefactive development of hydrogen sulfide can also be brought to light by the blackening of strips of reactive paper with neutral lead acetate left for a certain time in the nasal cavity (this means, however, is unreliable). f) Particularly in cases of apparent death from lightning strike, accidents of narcosis, asphyxia, drowning, etc., the futility of the various attempts (various stimulations, artificial respiration, rhythmic tractions of the tongue, excitant injections, intracardiac injection of adrenaline, if possible massage of the heart) directed at reawakening the activity of respiration and of circulation temporarily suspended may serve as a sign of real death, and these attempts must be prolonged even for some hours, if there exist signs or some presumption that make the restoration of vitality in the individual hopeful.

From the medico-pastoral point of view, granted for laypeople the difficulty of a sure ascertainment of death at its first appearance and the possibility of an extreme union of the soul with the body during that period in which, the last breath exhaled and the heartbeats ceased, the complete "cadaverization" of the individual is being accomplished, it is lawful to administer, under condition, absolution and Extreme Unction up to about half an hour after the appearance of death has occurred, if it is a case of death following consumption, and up to about two hours, if it is a case of sudden death (v. A. Vermeersch, Theologiae moralis, etc., III, p. 536; V. Heylen, De poenitentia, Malines 1946, p. 319).

From the moral point of view, it is not lawful for the physician, or for anyone else, to inflict on the individual who is believed dead, for the purpose of obtaining certainty of death, injuries such as are of themselves capable of killing (serious mutilations, dagger blows to the heart, etc.), even if the one doing this is convinced that death has really occurred; just as it would not be lawful, out of complaisance and to give reassurance to one who requests it, to simulate the carrying out of such acts, save for very grave reasons and with the danger of scandal removed. The puncture of the heart, with intracardiac injection of excitant substances (particularly adrenaline), is morally lawful, explicitly indicating the purpose of the eventual resuscitation aimed at, because it is not injurious and is capable of reawakening the individual in cases of apparent death.

IV. ICONOGRAPHY

Many of the iconographic themes in Christian art relating to death have distant precedents in classical examples, not always forgotten by medieval artists. According to Herodotus, during banquets in wealthy houses, especially in Egypt, as an invitation to enjoy life, wooden or metal statuettes representing a mummy or a skeleton were presented to the guests. The von Bissing collection in Berlin preserves an interesting example of this, accompanied by its case in the form of a pointed cippus. Roman art produced numerous convivial larvae and small bronzes depicting skeletons; some of these, in the Antikensammlung in Dresden and the Museum of Naples, are rendered with accurate anatomical detail. Death is identified with the skeleton also in a Hellenistic cup of the Schliemann collection in Berlin. The goblets of Boscoreale, of Pella and of the Louvre present a true dance of the dead. The contacts between literary culture and the figurative arts, with regard to these macabre representations, are attested by the reliefs of a funerary cippus in the British Museum (ca. the 3rd century AD) illustrating a scene from Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead. But most often the macabre representations would take on a satirical character. Skeletons are also depicted in interesting fragments of a mosaic floor, now in the Museo delle Terme in Rome.

In funerary monuments, however, death was replaced by allegories, such as the inverted torch, the theatrical mask, the head of Medusa, or, in the reliefs of sarcophagi, by cockfights, by sphinxes, by scenes of the vintage and of the hunt. This symbolism indeed passed into the Christian art of the early period, which left, for example, one of the most solemn monuments directed in this sense in the mosaic ring of the mausoleum of Constantia in Rome (4th century). Representations of death in Byzantine art are extremely rare. In the miniatures of the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes in the Vatican Library it is symbolized by a demon of dark complexion. In an ivory plaque in the British Museum, probably from the beginning of the 4th century, there appear the personifications of sleep and of death, who receive the soul of a deceased person. Both are winged, but sleep is rendered as a youthful figure, death as a bearded old woman of most repulsive appearance.

The properly macabre characteristics are accentuated in the West and with the advance of the Middle Ages. In a Danish ivory cross of 1075 (Museum of Copenhagen), the Contrast of life and death is depicted: death, in female form, plunges into a coffin marked with her name, at the feet of Life in royal form and dress. But generally it is identified with the devil or the witch (depending on the gender of the term that designates it in the various languages) or with the corpse. Demonic forms, in the act of devouring human beings, must have been its characteristics in a series of miniatures of 1122, forming part of the Office of the Dead of St. Vitalis, in the French national archives. As a witch it is presented by the famous fresco with the Triumph of Death in the Camposanto of Pisa. As a skeleton it appears perhaps for the first time in the miniatures of the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg; on the western facade of the cathedral of Strasbourg, by the hand of a sculptor of the late 13th century, who knew Byzantine anatomical drawings; in a relief of the baptismal font of Tryde, in Germany, illustrating the legend of St. Stanislaus, and in various Last Judgments, of which the most interesting example relating to death is found in the cathedral of Freiburg. This form of representation had wide diffusion throughout Europe: a pupil of Giotto, in the vaults of the Lower Church of Assisi, introduces it into the allegory of Chastity: skeletons are found depicted on tomb slabs. Three examples of the 14th century are known on a tomb of 1362 at La Saraz in Switzerland, in another of 1388 at Davenescourt and in a third at Laon (France) of 1393. From the 15th century about a dozen examples are known; already in them death, personified by a corpse in decomposition, acquires realistic and revolting characteristics, as in the relief of the tomb of Cardinal Lagrange, who died at Avignon in 1402, now in the local museum. These traits are accentuated in the innumerable representations of the 16th century. Sculptors take care to present all the most repugnant phases of the decomposition of the corpse, with bellies ripped open and swarming with worms (tomb of Jeanne de Bourlon, Countess of Auvergne, now in the Louvre; tomb of René de Châlons at Bar-le-Duc, work of L. Richier, etc.). Painters also treated this theme: Memling in 5 panels of the polyptych of Strasbourg, Jacopo Bellini in a drawing. It is found moreover in innumerable miniatures, illustrations, engravings, woodcuts. The skull is a reduced representation of death; in the famous pulpits of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, as already in crucifixes and panels of 1200, it appears at the foot of the Cross. In the Renaissance it is very widespread in German and Flemish art, also in engravings and prints, finally becoming, with Dürer, a heraldic motif. In Italy, in the 17th century, the decorative sculptures for funerary monuments, also due to Bernini, are noteworthy.

But the macabre and fantastic spirit of the late Middle Ages manifested itself more clearly in true pictorial legends, inspired by death and sometimes composed of several themes. Principal among these cycles are the "dance of the dead" or "macabre," the "encounter of the three living and the three dead," the "triumph of death" or "death triumphant."

The "danse macabre" (v.) is typically French and appears linked to literary precedents that go back to the 12th century, but it continued until the 18th century, leaving famous monuments. In Germany it had accentuated satirical characteristics from which individual themes derived: "death and the soldier," "death and the maiden," "death and the lover," etc., also collected in species of breviaries and reproduced in print and engraving, and due to great masters: Dürer, N. M. Deutsch, Holbein, Baldung Grien and Beham. In Italy the "dance of the dead" has few representations: the first, datable to around 1475, at S. Lazzaro, outside Como, undergoes French influence, while at Clusone, at Carisolo, at Pinzolo (the last this and dating back to 1539) it imitates German models; the only example of an illuminated codex appears to be the "ballo della morte" of the Riccardiana in Florence.

Much more widespread in Italy is the theme of the "encounter of the three living and the three dead," the origin of which is much debated. The oldest representation of the "encounter" is found in S. Margarita, near Melfi: three young men returned from the hunt seem to converse with three skeletons. In Abruzzo, in the cathedral of Atri, besides the skeletons and the hunters, there appear a page and a hermit, a figure that will be typical of Italian iconography, and that was sometimes identified with the holy monk Macarius (ca. 1260). In the church of S. Paolo, of the Old Camposanto, at Poggio Mirteto (Sabina), of the second half of the 13th century, the knights are replaced by the king, who brings his hand to his mouth and appears dismayed before the corpse. Similar is the oldest fresco of the cloister of S. Maria di Vezzolano, near Castelnuovo d'Asti, in Piedmont. A hermit, from the top of a rock, explains a scroll toward three knights, terrified by the skeletons, in a beautiful fresco of S. Flaviano di Montefiascone (early 14th century). This iconography is also found at Subiaco, in a panel of the University of Göttingen, by Jacopo del Casentino, in a diptych of the Academy of Florence, attributed to Bernardo Daddi, in the Breviary of Bianca of Savoy, in the second cloister of S. Maria di Vezzolano, etc. (14th century), and in the 15th in a fresco attributed to Martino di Alberto di Pontepietra in S. Fermo in Verona, in a panel of the Crawford collection in London, in a fresco of the sacristy of S. Luca in Cremona, etc., down to the drawings of Jacopo Bellini, one in the Louvre and one in the British Museum.

Sometimes the "dance of death" and the "encounter of the living and the dead" are joined together: perhaps this gave the inspiration for the canvases of Poussin (Louvre and the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth) and of Guercino (at the Corsini Gallery in Rome), representing against an Arcadian background the meditation on death: "Et in Arcadia ego."

Eugenio Battisti

V. BIOLOGY. - 1. Death of the individual and perpetuity of the species. - The definition of death presents the same difficulties as the definition of life, since, in saying that it is "the cessation of the vital process," one introduces the question of what life is (v.). In any case, death is the ineluctable conclusion of every vital process, and the so-called cases of immortality of certain unicellular organisms (protozoa, protophytes) do not suffice to refute this assertion, merely because they reproduce by successively dividing in two, thereby directly pouring their own body into forming that of their offspring. If it is true that they reproduce for innumerable generations without leaving corpses between one generation and the next, it is equally true that after a certain number of generations, in a relatively short time, practically nothing remains of the original protoplasm, which has instead been gradually renewed (Naupas, Woodruff, Lumière, Varigny). This is without taking into account the hecatombs that these animals undergo when environmental conditions (humidity, nutrition, temperature, etc.) become unfavorable; in these cases only a few individuals in the condition of cysts, in latent life, manage to survive so as to be the progenitors of a new series of generations with the return of favorable conditions.

Even the conception of the perpetuity and continuity of the germinal plasma of the higher, multicellular forms, according to the views of Weissmann (idioplasm), is subject to the same criticism; namely, that very little or nothing materially remains of the plasma of the first germinal cells after the innumerable series of generations that have led to the present generation of living beings. The mechanism of the continuous cellular reproduction of the germinal line, if on the one hand it allows the transmission of a part of the old material, on the other hand leads to the continuous manufacture of new material with the same characteristics as that directly transmitted to the descendant cells; the old protoplasm is thus progressively replaced by new material specifically similar. Thus, by a paradoxical mechanism, life perpetuates and renews itself through a slow and progressive demise.

In metazoa and metaphyta, that is, in multicellular organisms, to the germinal line is added the soma, which represents the most conspicuous part of the body. In the soma the cells, following different lines, differentiate into the various tissues with specific functions in order to carry out, through the division of labor, a specific activity. But with specialization, the cells lose the possibility of reproducing: histological differentiation condemns the cells to death, and in those tissues where great functional wear occurs and the elements are rapidly destroyed, reserves of undifferentiated cells must remain for a continuous renewal of the tissue through their reproduction.

On the basis of many observations in experimental embryology (isolation of blastomeres), experimental morphology (regenerative phenomena) and cytogenetics (the value of cell nuclei), every cell of an individual can be considered potentially capable of reproducing an entire organism as if it were an egg cell, because in every cell there is the whole hereditary patrimony (except, naturally, in those cases in which there has been degradation of the nuclear chromatin or of the entire nucleus). The conditions of monovular twins (polyembryony) and the numerous cases of somatic or vegetative reproduction in many plants and animals (coelenterates, worms, tunicates, etc.) argue in favor of this concept. The difference between the somatic line and the germinal line would therefore not be essential, but would consist only in the loss, on the part of the cells of the soma, of the actual possibilities of reproducing themselves with a total effect, because of the limitations imposed by differentiation. The soma can thereby be considered as a part of the cells of a single line that sacrifices itself through differentiation in order to give the possibility of survival, through the differentiation of a higher individuality, to the relatively few cells of the gonads that preserve, along with the germinative properties, totipotency, thus allowing the perpetuation of the species through successive generations. If the perpetuation of life is considered the capital problem of living beings, since such perpetuation occurs, as has been said, in unicellular organisms as well as in the germinative line of multicellular organisms through a mechanism of renewal without any actual ponderable material decease, the phenomenon, linked to multicellular organisms, of the death of the soma, that is, of the corpse, would turn out to be, paradoxically speaking, secondary. Always from this point of view, the mortal soma of animals and plants would have no other function than to be the support and guardian of the elements of the germinal line, such as spermatozoa and eggs, the only elements necessary for the preservation of the species; the death of the soma would stand as testimony to its uselessness for the purposes of the immortality of the species, once this mission of its has been fulfilled. Thus, again paradoxically, one could say with Butler that "the hen is but the means by which one egg makes another egg"!

It is evident that such a way of seeing things is far from being acceptable, that, if it is true that the supreme end of living beings is the preservation of the species, the vital phenomenon would have very little value if it were exhausted in the vicious circle of living in order to live. And it is precisely to the mortal, and therefore intermittent, somatic line that the manifestation of vital properties is linked, properties that find in man their maximum expression in the phenomena of intelligence and of the psyche. Human spiritual progress and evolution are certainly not presented by the germinal line, but are the fruit of the daily toil of the mortal soma, and this is transmitted as a heritage to the children through education and perhaps (it will be the task of genetics to demonstrate it) through a hereditary process owing to the influence of the soma on the germinal cells.

Leaving aside this last problem, which, though of extreme importance, does not yet have a sufficient experimental basis, one sees in the death of the soma a biological phenomenon of the greatest importance in the mechanism of the preservation and evolution of life on earth.

2. Death of the germinal elements

It is observed that nature, in order to guard against the possibility of extinction of species, is prodigal in the production of germinal cells: spermatozoa and eggs. For every animal and plant species their number is far higher than the individuals that normally reach maturity, far higher than that number which cannot be exceeded without bringing about an imbalance unfavorable to life in the individual biocenoses and in the biosphere. It is also observed that the greater the dangers that hang over the young of a species, owing to particular ecological conditions, the greater is the number of germinal elements produced.

Thus, taking the case of vertebrates, far more eggs are produced in the species that scatter them in the waters than in those that gather them in a nest and care for them; and the number is still smaller in those vertebrates in which the eggs develop in the maternal body.

Considering the human species, which is certainly not among the most prolific in nature, one calculates the possible maturation of about 450 eggs, with a production, according to Henle, in the ovary of about 72,000 oocytes. The male, in turn, can produce in his lifetime many billions of spermatozoa. Of all these gametes, which are potentially suitable for the production of an individual, only a few units reach the goal.

3. Death of the individual

Every plant or animal dies once its life cycle, which has a duration characteristic of each species, is completed. The research done to clarify the factors that determine the duration of life, and that directed at identifying the means to prolong it, have shown that, as a general phenomenon, albeit with some exceptions, the more rapid the maturation of the germinal elements is in animals, the shorter is the duration of life in the various species. The death of the soma has as its prelude the phenomenon of senescence, and this manifests itself from birth onward. The gradual loss of water, the accumulation of catabolites, the production of irreversible colloidal structures, the general colloidal changes of the protoplasm, are some of the most evident causes intrinsic to the protoplasm itself that determine its aging. To these causes must be added, in multicellular organisms, the aging of the organic systems and the gradual mineralization of the body.

But it is not only with the decease of individuals that death exhausts its purpose, aimed at the maintenance and evolution of life through its continuous renewal; rather, the corpses themselves are the substrate for the life of an innumerable host of necrophilous organisms (bacteria, protozoa, worms, insects, etc.). It must further be borne in mind that, with the exception of green plants, which can synthesize with the help of chlorophyll and by using solar energy the organic substances necessary for existence, and of the organisms that feed on their detritus, the great majority of living beings feed on parts of animals and plants (without its being necessary to kill these) or on entire organisms that are killed and devoured; thus the premature death of the victim allows the life of the predatory species.

4. Death of cells in the development and life of the individual

But, if the death of the organism at the end of its life cycle is in any case an inevitable fact, no less important is the cellular death that occurs continuously during its existence. The death of cells manifests itself not only in the adult or old individual, but from the embryo onward; indeed, this process represents a morphogenetic mechanism of capital importance.

It can be stated that the embryo develops not only through a continuous process of cell multiplication, but also through one of cell destruction that accompanies the former. Phenomena of schizia (cytolysis) allow the formation of openings, cavities and canals in the developing organs. Thus one sees that not everything that is built in the embryo is preserved: many organs are formed through successive stages of complication, useful and sufficient for the individual stages of development, but which gradually are demolished in whole or in part and replaced; thus, to cite an example, three kidneys succeed one another in the organogenesis of the excretory apparatus of the higher vertebrates. In many animals there is a succession of larval stages, and in the phenomena of metamorphosis, between one stage and the next, many tissues and organs are sacrificed with the construction of new organs and apparatuses suited to the condition of the subsequent larval stage or of the adult condition; particularly well known are the conditions of insects, in which the larva, through nymphosis, is transformed into the perfect insect, and those of the batrachians. In fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals, organs are formed with the embryo that serve embryonic life, but at birth they are abandoned and destroyed (embryonic appendages: chorion, yolk sac, amnion, allantois, etc.).

Even in the adult, the mortal processes affecting the cells of many tissues continue. It was the merit of Bizzozero and his school to establish the properties of renewal of the various tissues in mammals and in man. This renewal, which is brought about through processes of cell division of elements of a juvenile character that are preserved in various tissues (germinative tissues), serves to replace those elements that gradually die from functional wear and that, precisely in relation to this process of wear, are endowed with a short life cycle. There are tissues in which this turnover of cellular elements is continuous throughout life (tissues with labile elements), as, for example, the epidermis, which is continually keratinized on the surface and desquamated and is continually renewed by the action of the deep germinative layer, and the blood, whose red corpuscles, built without a nucleus for a functional refinement as carriers of oxygen, are condemned to a few weeks of life. In other tissues multiplication occurs only during the period of growth of the individual, but potentially the reproductive possibility is preserved throughout life, as in the liver and in other glands. Only in tissues with perennial elements, of which the nervous tissue is a typical example, do the cells live as long as the organism lives. However, even for this tissue, in animals with metamorphosis (such as the anuran amphibians), there are differentiated nerve cells that, once a functional cycle has ceased, are destroyed; thus in other species there is a reproductive possibility of the nerve cells (in the regeneration of the tail and of the spinal cord of the urodele amphibians).

For a deeper examination of senescence, reference is made to the monograph of Levi, and to those of Minor and of Lepeschkin, respectively for cytomorphosis and cellular necrobiosis (v. bibl.).

According to the calculations of C. Franke, in the human body there are about 4,000,000,000,000 fixed cells and 22,000 billion mobile cells, with a total of 26,500 billion. According to Moleschott and Buchner, in seven years the complete chemical renewal of this whole multitude of cells has been brought about, either through their replacement or through the renewal of their protoplasm. According to Ona (1924), 500 billion red corpuscles alone die every day (that is, those that can be contained in 100 cm³ of blood) and just as many are daily rebuilt.

The importance of the death of cells during development must be seen not only in the continuous renewal of living matter and in the processes of morphogenesis, but also appears in the direct utilization in vital phenomena of the products of cellular destruction (pigments, etc.). Consider, for example, as Baglioni demonstrated, that for the heartbeat (experiments on cartilaginous fishes) the presence in the blood of small percentages of urea is necessary, a substance that is a direct derivative of the disintegration of protein substances. Thus the biliary pigments, produced with the destruction of the red corpuscles, are of fundamental importance in the saponification of fats and in the regulation of the intestinal flora. The dead cells themselves, which in animals have undergone a fatty or keratinous degeneration and which in plants are lignified or suberized, perform very important functions for the life of the whole.

But the phenomena of cytolysis also have another direct importance in biological phenomena: indeed, with the agony of the cells (necrobiosis), and therefore with their destruction, substances are released that have a stimulating effect on the reproduction of the other living cells. Haberland was able to demonstrate how in plants the multiplication of the tissues of wounds was stimulated by maltreated cells in the process of destruction, and he spoke of wound hormones or necrohormones. Banner, Haagen and Smith were able to isolate a protein substance endowed with such activity (traumatic acid). Similar phenomena have also been observed in animals, affecting cells in agony. According to J. Brachet, the nucleic acid that is released with cytolysis has great importance in the phenomena of embryonic evocation (organizer). The inductions that are obtained in embryos with transplants of small pieces of dead or cytolysing tissues, or otherwise maltreated and in an agonal phase, can be interpreted as due to the released nucleic acid and to other substances. Thus if, for example, a fragment of tissue irradiated with X-rays is transplanted into the field of the limbs (Perri in amphibians), numerous inductions of supernumerary limbs are obtained, stimulated by the cells in slow destruction of the transplanted fragment.

Important in this regard are the experiments of Filatov on the subcutaneous transplantation of fragments of maltreated tissues (with low temperature, with darkness) that produce a general stimulating biological effect in the treated organism. The effect of the electroshock of Cerletti and Bini is probably to be interpreted in the same order of phenomena; with this treatment the organism is brought to the extreme limit of resistance and the cells release acroagenins, as Cerletti calls them, with a general beneficial stimulating effect.

In conclusion of these briefly expounded facts, death must not be considered as an accident in antagonism with life. Its finality, already in the phenomena of mortality of the gametes, its importance in the mechanism of embryonic development, its necessity for the unfolding of physiological phenomena, argue for considering it, with apparent paradox, an essential factor of the life of an individual. With the death of the individual there is the continuity of life, but with a material substrate continually renewed, and thus death comes to be the fundamental process of every mechanism of biological improvement and of evolution, however considered, including that of the intellectual evolution and of the spirit of the human species. - See plate XCVII.

Alberto Stefanelli

DEATH OF JESUS CHRIST: for the history, v. GESÙ CRISTO; for the soteriological value, v. MERITO DI GESÙ CRISTO; REDEZIONE; SODDISFAZIONE.