214- 
and 
Grotqfque 
CHAPTER 
XIII. 
THE DANCE or DEATH.-"ms PAINTINGS IN THE cnuacn or LA 
crmrsn DIEU.--THE REIGN OF FOLLY.-SEBASTIAN BRANDT; THE 
"sum OF  OF CHURCH SERVICE.-TROUBLEi 
SOME BEGGARS._GEILER,S SERMONS.-_BADIUS, AND ms smv OF 
FOOLISH  PLEASURES OF SMELL.4ERASMUS; THE 
" PRAISE OF F0LLY." 
THERE is {till one cycle of fatire which almoft belongs to the middle 
ages, though it only became developed at their clofe, and became 
molt popular after they were paft. There exifted, at lealt as early as the 
beginning of the thirteenth century, a legendary itory of an interview 
between three living and three dead men, which is ufually told in French 
verfe, and appears under the title of" Des trois vifs et des trois rnorts." 
According to fome verfions of the legend, it was St. Macarius, the 
Egyptian reclufe, who thus introduced the living to the dead. The 
verfes are fometimes accompanied with figures, and thefe have been 
found both fculptured and painted on eccletialtical buildings. At a later 
period, apparently early in the fifteenth century, fome one extended this 
idea to all ranks of fociety, and pictured a ikeleton, the emblem of death, 
or even more than one, in communication with an individual of each 
clafs; and this extended fcene, from the manner of the grouping-in 
which the dead appeared to be wildly dancing off with the living-- 
became known as the " Dance of Death." As the earlier legend of the 
three dead and the three living was, however, llill often introduced 
at the beginning of it, the whole group was molt generally known- 
efpecially during the Hfteenth century-as the "Danfe Macabre," or 
Dance