Rosary, ivory, silver and partially gilded mounts. 

Carved in Germany, c.1500-1525.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY from whose website all photos.

 

 

 

 

Whence the ivory came is not noted by the museum even if it is known that the trade into Europe of ivory from Africa and Asia predated the making of this exquisite rosary by at least one thousand years.

 

No information about the the technique(s) used to make the silver mounts and rings.

 

Each bead shows a well-clothed, well-fed man or woman on one side; and on the other, the skeletal head of a dead person, primarily male.

 

The eight beads vary slightly in length but are each approximately two and a half inches long. 

 

There are Latin inscriptions on two beads: on one:  think of death; on a second, backwards: you will be of prayer itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dying do not die here in North America.  They ‘pass.’

 

The (North American) civilization has become death-phobic;

 

so death-phobic that nobody is surprised at press reports of people who, ill and hospitalized of the consequences of Covid-19, deny that the virus exists;

 

and the Canadian wiseman,  Stephen Jenkinson (Orphan Wisdom) has a larger and larger following.

He headed the hospice program of a major Canadian hospital.

 

Now he talks to people wanting to accommodate the inevitability of death in their thinking: a practice absent in the lives of his many patients to their prolonged suffering and that of their families.

 

 

 

 

Rosary, ivory, silver and partially gilded mounts. 

Carved in Germany, c.1500-1525.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY from whose website all photos.