Death; Middle Ages; Pastoral Practice; Visual Arts; Painting

The Legend of the Three Dead and the Three Living undoubtedly reflects late medieval cultural and social experience of death and that must almost certainly be a reason for its widespread dissemination throughout the Europe of the High and Late Middle Ages. The proposed study introduces all survived Bohemian examples of the Legend and interprets them within the broader European context, emphasizing the period religious and pastoral praxis as well as focusing on certain aspects of the Legend iconography. The allusion of corporal death as the 'death of the world' can be seen in the oldest macabre image in Bohemian medieval art in the Church of St Maurice in Mouřenec, visually linking the Legend with the Last Judgment and the Requiem Mass. The image of the Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead in the Dominican church in České Budějovice corresponds well with a popular period prayer Obsecro te, often used as a general plea for salvation and for a 'good death' at the end enclosed by a plea for revelation of the death hour. The last representation of the Legend can be found in the memorial church of St Bartholomew in Kočí, where the motif documents the fact that such a macabre theme was also used by Hussites.