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ars moriendi

Latin Phrases
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The art of dying; a tradition of writing offering guidance on how to face death with dignity and grace.

Detailed Definition
Ars moriendi refers both to a specific genre of medieval Christian devotional literature and to the broader poetic and philosophical tradition of meditating on death as a craft to be practiced and perfected. In poetry, it appears in elegies, meditations, and valedictory verse. Poets draw on it to explore how one prepares for death, what constitutes a good death, and how the dying moment reflects the quality of the life lived, giving mortality a kind of aesthetic form.
Example
Example in poetry:
The medieval ars moriendi texts produced a tradition of poetry on dying well that runs from the Pearl Poet through Donne's "Death, Be Not Proud" to Raleigh's poem written on the eve of his execution; Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" is a violent rejection of the ars moriendi tradition — refusing the prescribed good death in favor of furious resistance; Keats's letters and later odes constitute an improvised ars moriendi — a young poet consciously learning to die through the discipline of writing about mortality and beauty; A poet in a hospice residency might work with dying patients on their own ars moriendi — using verse to shape and give meaning to the experience of approaching death; Philip Larkin's "Aubade" is a modern anti-ars moriendi — stripping away the consolations of the tradition and confronting death as pure extinction with no redemptive art to soften it
Additional Notes
Ars moriendi refers both to a specific genre of late medieval Christian devotional literature — the most famous being the anonymous fifteenth-century text of that name — and to the broader philosophical and literary tradition of preparing for death. The medieval ars moriendi texts provided a practical guide to the dying person and those attending them, identifying the five temptations of the dying (loss of faith, despair, impatience, spiritual pride, avarice) and the appropriate responses to each. Students should note how this tradition shapes the structure of many elegies and death poems: the movement from temptation or despair through to acceptance and resolution follows the ars moriendi template. Related concepts include the bona mors (good death), the consolatio philosophiae, and the medieval tradition of the contemptus mundi (contempt of the world), which prepared the soul for death by detaching it from earthly goods.
Other Meanings of “ars moriendi”
Also Known As
the art of dying art of dying well dying well ars bene moriendi
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