Death and Attitudes toward Death at the Time of Early European Expeditions to Africa (15th Century)

• Published in: Cahiers d'études africaines 2014-01, Vol.3 (215), p.787-811
• Main Author: Tymowski, Michal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Africa; Attitudes; Blacks; Burial; Death; Death Attitudes; Dying; Europe; Merchants; Middle Ages; Portugal; Testimony; Travel
• ISSN: 0008-0055

This article describes causes of death among both European explorers and Africans, and reactions, attitudes, and consequences for those who remained alive. The problem is the one-sidedness of the source material. Firstly, the available sources (chronicles, travel reports, few documents and court records) are exclusively European. Second, attitudes toward death differed between knights and merchants. In turn, documents provide testimony of the legal consequences of the death of the Portuguese in Africa. Among the Portuguese, the death of a high-ranking person was treated differently than the death of a person who had no social position. Above all, the death of people on one's own side is treated differently than the deaths of persons of the opposing side. The deaths of Africans from the viewpoint of the Portuguese were anonymous and collective. In the first phase of African expeditions, death was usually violent. There was no time for the dying to prepare for it, no time for contemplation or for usual gestures of custom and culture. The late medieval Ars moriendi could not be realized. Africans-on the contrary-could organize the appropriate burial ceremonies for their own dead, but the death of captured slaves occurred in isolation and was particularly lonely and tragic. Adapted from the source document.