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The Artes and the Ars moriendi in Late Renaissance Venice: The Professions in Fabio Glissenti's Discorsi morali contra il dispiacer del morire, detto Athanatophilia (1596)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

George W. McClure
George W. McClure*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
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Abstract

In his voluminous Moral Discourses Against the Displeasure of Dying (1596), the Venetian physician Fabio Glissenti describes the tenacious revolt against death that permeates virtually all of society. Though important in itself as a major humanistic treatment of death in the vernacular, Glissenti's treatise has an unusual significance that lies not so much in its patent purpose - to recommend the acceptance of death - but rather in its countervailing undercurrent - to probe the psychology of work. In novellas and dialogues among interlocutors drawn from the gamut of professional types in Venice, Glissenti presents testimonials of professional art or pride, exchanges concerning professional morality, and Dantesque catalogues of punishments for professional sins. This study examines the professional ethos suffusing the Discorsi morali as a reflection of moral and psychological attitudes toward work in early modern culture.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 92 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1998

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Footnotes

*

Research support for this project was provided by the Bankhead Fund of the University of Alabama's Department of History. I would like to thank Renaissance Quarterly's anonymous readers for their helpful criticisms and suggestions, and I am grateful to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence for permission to reprint plates from its 1596 edition of the Discorsi.

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