Medieval art was super weird. Rabbits are featured getting revenge on humans, knights are shown defending themselves from seemingly normal snails, and men are depicted holding all sorts of wind instruments up to their backsides. And we thought modern art was bizarre.
(it is)
But my favorite genre of bizarre medieval art phenomena is bored people getting brutally murdered.
These images are all over the place.
And they're hilarious.
By now, you might be asking, "Why do they look so bored?". Which, of course, is a fair question. I couldn't come up with a reason when I saw them for the first time. The answer is in Latin.
'Ars Moriendi'
'Ars Moriendi' is the medieval 'art of dying well'. It basically means that if you look upset or cry out in pain when on the verge of death, it implies that you are afraid of dying. Since most people in the medieval age were Catholic, they believed in heaven and hell. If you were afraid of dying, it meant that you weren't sure you were going to heaven, making you a heathen. The ideal was to die happy, or at least, without looking upset.
In medieval art, if there's a dying person who looks upset, you can reasonably surmise that the person depicted is an enemy.
In conclusion, this is a trend that we need to bring back.
Except this time, we shouldn't have a logical explanation.
Let's confuse future historians.
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