Expressing of death and dying in Gdańsk funeral sermons

Abstract

The aim of the article is an analysis of expressing of death and dying present in Gdańsk funeral sermons of 17th an 18th centuries. Funeral sermons, which were characteristic mainly for protestant communities, developed in central Germany. Yet it turned out that Gdańsk can also boast about the collection containing 485 copies. The material for the analysis has been excerpted from title pages constituting integral parts of sermons and life histories of the dead containing descriptions of the scenes of death. In the research the particular attention has been paid to the expressions of death and dying: whether the predominant were the standardized ones or creative, literal or euphemistic. Their contexts have also been analysed.