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Memento mori pendant

Context This Memento Mori Pendant made around 1500 from ivory and measuring 7.6 centimeters high was produced in the southern Netherlands. It is now kept in London’s Ranger’s House, which holds nearly a thousand objects collected by Sir Julius Werner, a nineteenth-century businessman who made his fortune in South African mining, a legacy that is obviously tied to the injustices of colonialism. This pendant shows how, in the late Middle Ages, people in the Low Countries were deeply concerned with death and moral living. It reminded its owner that life is short and that pride and vanity are meaningless, encouraging a virtuous life in preparation for death. When attached to a rosary, it also gave a sense of spiritual control through prayer. Subject / Style This ivory pendant presents a double image showing the contrast between life and death. On one side, the figure of a young woman is depicted. On the other side, however, there is a carved figure with a decayed skull, skeletal form, and worms crawling through its flesh. The style is naturalistic and detailed, characteristic of late Gothic craftsmanship in Europe.

Smelling Disease and Death in the Antwerp Church of Our Lady, c. 1450-1559 Wendy Wauters uses an image of this piece, along with others like it, in her research. The essay begins by examining memento mori pendants whose noses were worn smooth, which indicates “where it would have been rubbed by the owner during private devotion.” (18) Regarding this specific memento mori pendent, when viewed in profile “it is clear how intensely the nose of the young lady has been abraded in comparison to the features of the skeleton on the opposite side,” which has no sign of wear, as if owners “fastidiously avoided making contact with the repulsive representation of death.” (18) Similar wear appears on many pendants from the Southern Netherlands between 1520 and 1530, where “the cadaver remains untouched.” (19) This evidence offers a glimpse into religious practice in the late Middle Ages, showing how devotion engaged the senses, specifically smell. In the Low Countries, religious art often used scent to express spiritual ideas (sweet smells suggested heaven and divine presence, while foul odors symbolized decay and sin). Churches were filled with a mix of incense, bodies, and the scent of death, creating a powerful sensory environment. In this setting, memento mori pendants did more than remind people of mortality, but they helped believers confront and transform the smells of death and disease into moments of spiritual reflection and purification.

An Odour. A Taste. A Touch. Impossible to Describe: Noli Me Tangere and the Senses In her discussion of smell, Barbara Baert explains that scent acts as a bridge between life and death, memory and spirit. It is an “aerial element” (140) like breath or pneuma, linking the body to divine presence. Though ephemeral, smell uniquely connects to memory and intuition, awakening what Baert calls “our lost intuitions” and the “archetype of the lost paradise.” (140) Taste, closely related to touch through the mouth, becomes a channel of knowledge and desire, recalling the bite into the apple. In Christian tradition, these senses symbolize spiritual insight, as to taste or smell the divine is to experience knowledge through the body. Baert shows that in medieval devotion, scent and taste were not only sensory experiences but metaphors for mystical understanding and communion with God. Both the memento mori pendant and images of the Noli me tangere show how the multisensory nature of medieval devotion shaped spiritual experience and the relationship to the sacred. In the case of the memento mori pendants, the act of rubbing the figure’s nose and the association with smell show how believers engaged physically and olfactorily with sacred ideas by using touch and scent to confront death, decay, and the hope of salvation. Similarly, in Baert’s discussion of Noli me tangere scenes, touch is withheld to create spiritual distance. The absence of contact heightens awareness of other senses, like sight, smell, and the imagined feeling of Christ’s transformed body. Also, Baert’s idea that smell connects life, death, and memory can connect to the memento mori pendant. The small object was meant to remind the wearer of death, just like scent can bring back memories or connect us to the divine.

The Smell of Relics: Authenticating Saintly Bones and the Role of Scent in the Sensory Experience of Medieval Christian Veneration In this research, the authors explains how “a saint’s scent was not only a sign of his/her divinity, but also that of his/her proximity to God and ‘goodwill’ toward the faithful who could share in the olfactory experience.” (2-3) This connects to the idea of osmogenesia, or the belief that saints, even in death, produced a sweet and pure aroma. The authors argue that smell “operated as a means of authenticating or characterizing prominent saintly relics,” and that “relic smells would have evoked a certain object, a specific site or a particular religious experience.” (12) The authors show that a saint’s scent signaled holiness and brought the faithful into a shared spiritual experience. Similarly, the worn noses on memento mori pendants show that owners touched them repeatedly during devotion. While the skeleton’s face was avoided, the smooth features of the young woman allowed the wearer to confront mortality in a controlled, intimate way. Like the scent of a saint, the pendant turned a sensory experience into a connection with the divine and a moment of reflection on life and death.

The Odor of the Other: Olfactory Symbolism and Cultural Categories Constance Classen’s research explores how different cultures use smell to define identity, morality, and social boundaries. Additionally, how the “use of olfactory symbolism as a means of expressing and regulating cultural identity and difference is found in a great many cultures.” (135) Classen argues that odors are not just physical but symbolic. Across societies, smell helped distinguish people from one another, which reinforced ideas of cleanliness, civilization, and power. This can connect to the memento mori pendents in regards to the bigger picture of Wauters’ paper - disease and the Church of Our Lady in Antwerp. In this setting, smell carried moral and spiritual meaning, with sweetness suggesting holiness or divine favor, and foul odors signifying decay and sin. The church’s mix of incense and sickness made scent part of religious life. The pendant shows this same idea, as the untouched skeleton recalls the smell of death, while the worn nose of the woman reflects a need for purity and salvation (through smell). Both Classen and Wauters show how smell shaped moral and spiritual understanding.

What does the worn nose of the pendant reveal about touch as a devotional act? How does scent play into this (as the figure can’t smell, but the holder of the pendent can)? Could the act of repeatedly rubbing the nose have also be a way of symbolically blocking “bad” scents from the nose? How does the sense of touch work alongside smell to create a larger spiritual experience?