Of all the ideas people have had about the afterlife, that of Saint Theresa of Lisieux, who lived in Normandy in the last third of the 19th century, is particularly seductive: she hoped to find an exact restoration of the place in Paradise that she had spent the first eleven years of her life with its inhabitants, memories and all the delicious colors of her childhood. This is reported by the French historian Philippe Ariès in his grandiose book “The story of death” – in the French original it is called “L’homme devant la mort” (1978), for example “Man in the face of death”, which makes the balance of power more honest portrays.
People have always died, and despite many efforts, it is still inevitable to this day – but the way they are dealt with has changed dramatically over the centuries. Death is possibly the only thing that humanity has not been able to get down – on the contrary. Ariès, who died in 1984 at the age of 69 and who, incidentally, referred to himself as a “Sunday historian” – his main job documenting the import of tropical fruits – argues that death was tamed earlier, his research began in the Middle Ages.
Only the poor were buried intact
Back then, mankind was able to come to terms with him, but in the course of the ages he got wilder and wilder until he reached its present state, which Ariès understands as unleashed: our death rooms are no longer filled with onlookers as in 17th century France, but we face it, mute and powerless, and pretend it doesn’t exist. But the outsourced death rages all the more terribly.
The reading is strangely comforting, even if it is a lot about bones, dissection or the fear of being buried alive, which for centuries ensured that higher-ranking people did not get underground without being cut open here and there for a test – one buried intact only the poor. But reading it temporarily reconciles you with the prospect of possibly dying yourself one day, when it apparently happened to everyone who has ever lived, without exception.
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