The Evolution Of The View Of The Medieval Western Europe People Died

Death is at the heart of issues which Christianity concerns. In the Middle Ages lasting for approximately one thousand years, Christianity was unique and its status can’t be replaced by anything. Its preaching on death deeply influenced common folk of that time, in other words, western European’s death attitude was affected by Christianity greatly in the Medieval times. Currently, the academic circle have paid much attention to the problem of Medieval death. Looking back on the research result, western historical circle are very concerned about this problem and have gained extraordinary fruit, however, little attention is paid in domestic circle. Based on this, the paper attempts to do an elementary comb about common folk’s death attitude in the Middle Ages. I hope it can benefit the academic circle.The paper is made up of three parts:introduction, text and conclusion. The introduction mainly states the reasons and significance of choosing this topic and current research condition of it. The text is composed of three chapters, dividing the Middle Ages into the early, middle and late periods. Chapter one mainly analyses western European’s death attitude in the early Middle Ages. The author firstly draws the conclusion that common folk of that time widely expect death from the perspective of some ecclesiastic elites, and then introduces two places which the soul will arrive after one’s death, that is, heaven and hell, finally briefly analyses the reasons expecting death. Chapter two mainly analyses common folk’s view of death in the middle Medieval times and pointed out the changes different from the early period in death attitude. Through the analysis of historical background in the middle period, the author think that people still look forward to death, but people began to worry about their own death, and there is a new concept of purgatory, which is the largest changes compared with the early death. Chapter three, in the late Middle Ages, rampant plagues, frequent occurrence of wars and natural disasters led to a large number of deaths. This fact made people have a fear of death especially bad death and made them expect a good death. The conclusion makes a brief summary of the evolution of western European’s death attitude in the Middle Ages. The author thinks that common folk at that time widely expect death and the afterlife, but this death attitude is not immutable. The degree of their desire becomes more and more weaker. Modern westerners is indifferent to death, which is is gradually evolved from the middle ages.