MEMENTO MORI

The expression memento mori (Latin, meaning "be aware of mortality") comes from ancient Rome. There was the ritual that a slave stood or walked behind the victorious general during a triumphal procession. He held a wreath of gold or laurel over the head of the victorious and continually exhorted with the following words: "Memento mori." ("Remember that you will die.") "Memento te hominem esse." ("Remember that you are human.") "Respice post te, hominem te esse memento." ("Look around and remember that you too are only human.") It became a symbol of vanitas, transience, well over 2000 years ago, and later became part of the Cluniac liturgy. Memento mori does not refer to a cult of the dead or ancestors. Nor does it contain a death cult or the longing for eternity typical of romanticism.

The prerequisite for this was and is always the idea of a court of the dead of whatever kind, as it exists above all in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam, but also appears in the religion of ancient Egypt and Zoroastrianism. The judgment of the dead is an instance that judges according to good and bad behavior in life, i.e. morally, with good and bad representing moral, relative and culture-specific values. All in all, the basic vanitas idea is largely missing in all the examples listed below. As far as the religion of ancient Egypt is concerned, there is a strict court for the dead there, whose moral concept has also influenced Christian ideas. However, magic formulas and amulets, as described in the Book of the Dead, especially from the New Kingdom onwards, enable the deceased to enjoy this court to be tricked, as it were, a perverse idea for the Abrahamic religions. In addition, ethical misconduct is only given relatively little consideration, the focus of the proceedings before the throne of Osiris are rather offenses in the legal sense, violation of rules of decency, violation of cultic regulations, etc., i.e. a so-called negative confession of sin. Tartaros in Greek mythology, on the other hand, is a special place of punishment for enemies (the Titans, Tantalus) and competitors of the gods themselves. Hades, on the other hand, was understood as the uniform and eternal abode of all the dead. Any kind of memento mori ideology was thus superfluous. On the other hand, since Pindar, Heraclitus and Hesiod, but above all with Plato in Book 10 of the Politeia, Greek philosophy began to develop numerous ideas, some of which later found their way into Christianity. According to an old Roman custom, behind a victorious commander, for whom a triumphal procession was made, was a slave or priest, who held a laurel wreath or the golden oak-leaf crown of the Temple of Jupiter over his head and repeatedly admonished: "Memento moriendum esse!" (“Remember that you have to die!”, mutatis mutandis). This was more a warning against the hubris of deeming oneself divine to the people than a reminder of personal vanitas. The concept of the transmigration of souls, as found primarily in Hinduism and Buddhism (but also in Greek philosophy), contains similar ideas, but which are intended to lead to the final goal of Nirvana (Dharma and Karma) on a hierarchical path, and those hence the finality of divine judgment is lacking. Evil as a concept has therefore not developed as an ethical category in these religions. Death is also considered merely as a sleep before rebirth. Zoroastrianism, which focuses on human free will for the first time, knows a strict judgment of the dead. His judgments lead to punishment, but this is not final, but is equalized by Ahura Mazda's final victory over Ahriman's evil. However, memento mori implies the irrevocable finality of a punishment, which must therefore be avoided at all costs. Despite the Kabbalah, the memento mori idea has also remained quite foreign to Judaism. In Islam, the first test by the angel of death is only to determine whether the deceased is a Muslim. The Last Judgment, on the other hand, is evaluated morally. However, asceticism was largely alien here, and monasticism as in Christianity was hardly developed here, despite Islamic mysticism. However, the strict Islamic doctrine of predestination is decisive here. It left “no room for the development of an autonomous evil, since evil was not linked to man's reason for being. The Christian tradition, which is very closely linked to the problem of people born in sin and burdened by original sin, is not an Islamic issue.” The death wish of Islamist suicide bombers is even the opposite of the memento mori idea, because they believe Indeed, as a martyr (shahid), paradise and its joys are guaranteed for them directly and without the Last Judgment. According to the literature, this attitude has only superficially to do with religion, more with a modern sense of identity that subordinates individual death to an immortal idea.

The memento mori motif faded over time to become a purely formal motto on tombstones, a motto in obituaries, and finally appeared only as a purely artistic motif in still lifes. As a stylistic motif, it can be found in all eras of art. Typical motifs in vanitas still lifes are rotting fruit, pomegranates covered with flies, overturned wine glasses, skulls and similar objects symbolizing transience. The depiction of the dance of death, for example by Hans Holbein the Younger, or the death train from Spangenberg is also related in terms of motif. The idea of the memento mori, albeit weakened and non-religious, has continued into modern times and can be found here, e.g. B. with Salvador Dalí, the photographer Man Ray or the pop artist Warhol. On film, the subject was treated, among others, by Ingmar Bergman in 1957 in The Seventh Seal and 1998 by Martin Brest in Rendezvous with Joe Black. Swedish rock band Ghost took up the concept in their 2018 track Pro Memoria from the album Prequelle, which nudges the listener to always be aware of dying against the backdrop of the Black Death ("Don't you forget about dying, don't you forget about your friend's death”). The American rock band Polyphia named their 2022 album Remember That You Will Die, which corresponds to an English translation. According to their guitarist Tim Henson, it's about seizing the day and getting things done before you can't anymore. For the NATO meeting in Vilnius (Lithuania) on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, where money, arms and symbolic support for Ukraine were discussed, as well as Sweden's hoped-for membership in the military alliance, the Luxembourg delegation arrived in a jet belonging to the band Depeche Mode with Memento Mori skull glued to fuselage.