Memento mori is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death. The expression developed with the growth of Christianity, which emphasized Heaven, Hell, and salvation of the soul in the afterlife. The most obvious places to look for memento Mori meditations are in funeral art and architecture, such as the transi or cadaver tomb.
About Memento mori in brief
Memento mori is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death. The expression developed with the growth of Christianity, which emphasized Heaven, Hell, and salvation of the soul in the afterlife. 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. 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 future. The most obvious places to look for memento Mori meditations are in funeral art and architecture, such as the transi or cadaver tomb, a tomb that depicts the decayed corpse of the deceased. The best example is the Capuchin Crypt in Rome, where the walls are mostly or partially covered by human remains, and the entrance to the Ossos has the motto: “We, lying bare, await yours”. Public clocks 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 necatus, or ultima ultima, or “time flees, strikes and flees”. Old clocks often sported automed flees who would appear to strike the clock, often with the words: “Time flees and strikes and strikes” The phrase is pronounced məˈmɛntoʊ ˈm°toh MOR-ee.
In English, the phrase is pronunciation of the 2nd person singular active imperative of meminī, ‘to remember, to bear in mind’, usually serving as a warning: \”remember!\” Mori is the present infinitive of the deponent verb morior ‘to die’. In other words, \”remember death\” or \”remember that you die\”. The philosopher Democritus trained himself by going into solitude and frequenting tombs. The Hávamál, a 13th century Icelandic compilation poetically attributed to the god Odin, includes two sections – the Gestaþáttr and the Loddfáfnismál – offering many gnomic proverbs expressing the memente mori philosophy. This became a fashion in the tombs of the wealthy in the fifteenth century, and surviving examples still offer a stark reminder of the vanity of earthly riches. In the Christian context, the mementso mor i acquires a moralizing purpose quite opposed to the nunc est bibendum theme of classical Antiquity. The most striking to contemporary minds is the Transi or Cadaver Tomb, which depicts the decay of the dead body of a wealthy man, and is still a popular tourist attraction in Europe and the U.S. Today, the tomb stones in the colonial United States frequently depict winged skulls, skeletons, or angels snuffing out candles.
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This page is based on the article Memento mori published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
