Emotions and Death of the Counts of Martinice and the Princes of Schwarzenberg between the Baroque and the Romanticism
Abstract
Between the Baroque and the Romanticism the refleciton of dying and discursive framework of emotional experience of death fundamentally changed in the milieu of Catholic high nobility. The ideal baroque death should have taken the form of an extreme point at which dying person was confessing its own sins by theatrical gestures and utterances.
The ritual of deathbed explicitly confirmed denominational and spiritual orientation of the family. Its next generation, other noblemen and commoner society should have been convinced of that orientation by written and iconographic testimony rich on symbols.
The Romanticism contrarily filled the dying with sentiment, loving care and family cohesion. In the milieu of high nobility it brought comforting and peaceful death.
Finally, between the Baroque and the Romanticism the level of private and public experience of the last moments changed. The Baroque "theatrical" deathbed, which was presented with the central figure of the dying and the priest, was a public event.
It gradually changed into the intimate, quiet contemplation without many witnesses, balled into the family circle. In addition a doctor slowly spent more time at the bedside of the dying noble person than a priest.
What has not changed, was an anxious effort to meet the expected patterns of behavior. By trying to fulfill the contemporary ideal of "good death" the counts of Martinice and the princes of Schwarzenberg tried to affirm their unique position in the society of Bohemian, respectively European, high nobility.
Their emotional experiences should have served as an example to their descendants and should have become one of the constitutive elements of the familial memory.