Death and Bernard of Clairvaux in Selmecbánya (Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia) at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century
Death and Bernard of Clairvaux in Selmecbánya (Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia) at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: The standing grave statue of Provost Georg Schönberg in Pozsony(Bratislava, Slovakia), inscribed with the year 1470 and depicting the prelate as aliving person, bears the influence of Nikolaus Gerhaerts von Leyden. One of the twostone tablets belonging to it with inscriptions from around 1486, the year of thedeath of the provost, describes the corpse of the deceased, feeden by worms in thetomb.The memento mori representations of the corpse or skeleton eaten by worms arenot unusual in the funeral art of late medieval Europe, but there is almost noprecedent of it on the territory of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom. The only suchmonument is the part of a special “collection” of late medieval tombslabs placedsecondarily in the outer wall of the medieval Castle-church (the former parishchurch) of Selmecbánya. Besides the tombstones of Georgius Cerndel (GörigKörndel, d. 1479), cameralist of Selmec, Johannes Hohel (d. 1480), a burgher of thetown, and Gregory (d. 1516), possibly parson of the settlement, there is a wilfullydamaged slab of reddish vulcanic stone, depicting a skeleton-like figure with wormsand frogs, holding a scythe. It is the personification of the Death, without anyreference to a concrete person. In the museum collection of the former church thereis a corner-fragment of a tombslab, carved of similar stone with similar framing, theGerman inscription of which – VOR GEORGY IST GESTOR[BEN] (“died before theday of Saint George”) – is formed of similar humanistic letters, as the inscription ofthe slab depicting the personification of the Death. The two pieces might belongtogether – at least on the level of the client. The personification of the Deathbelonged perhaps to a more complex work of a danse macabre – up to now withoutany parallel in the mural painting or in the sculptural arts of medieval Hungary.The inscription of the stone slab with the Death refers to the mortality, too:FORMA FAVOR POPVLI FERVOR IVVENILIS OPESQ(UE) DIRIPVERE TIBINOSCERE QVID SIT HOMO. A close version of this text can be read in theAvicenna-incunabulum of John Filipec (Pruisz), bishop of Várad (Nagyvárad,Oradea, now Romania) in Hungary and Olmütz in Moravia (d. 1509), now in theSächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden. A hand-written verse in Latin on the backcoverof the book is signed by the bishop of Moravian origin, with a short commentin Czech language. The first two lines of the verse: “Forma, fa… populi, feruoriuuenilis, opesq(ue) / Surripuere tibi, noscere quid sit homo.” These verses (and twomore lines of the Filipec-text) can be traced back to the “Meditationes” linked in latemedieval times with the name of Bernard of Clairvaux, but written in the thirteenthcentury by an unknown author.

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