The hour of Philippe

Philippe Ariès (1914–84) first won fame for his provocative rethinking of the history of childhood and the family [1], though his contributions have subsequently been severely criticized [2]. What then of his studies of the history of death? These too opened up an exciting new field of inquiry [3]. Have they stood the test of time, or suffered a similar fate? Indeed, has the whole history of death itself passed on, reflecting new concerns and posing fresh questions? [4]. Ariès’ views were delivered first in a thin and then in a fat book. The former, Western attitudes towards death, published in 1974, started life as a lecture series given at Johns Hopkins University [5]. The latter, L’Homme devant la mort, appeared in 1977, being translated four years later as The hour of our death [6]. Whatever current verdicts, these still make absorbing reading for their brilliant explorations of the material culture of death and all its symbolic meanings: caskets and urns, limbo and purgatory, the devotional and the ex voto. One problem posed by Ariès’ approach is that he did not offer a simple linear periodization, but a mélanqe of the synchronic and the diachronic. While mentalités change, old beliefs, Ariès presumes, are not wholly superseded, and sometimes he seems to subscribe to dated notions respecting the timelessness of folk wisdom [7]. Broadly speaking, however, The hour of our death presents a sequence of five main attitudes, tracing a decline and fall in European relationships with the Grim Reaper. Modern times come off worst. The initial stage was characterized by a oneness between the living and the dead. Death was tame and individuals yielded as if to sleep. This acceptance— typical, Ariès implies, of primitive societies—proved compatible with early Christian teachings [8]. 83