Riti e forme della danza macabra come specchio dei rapporti interordinamentali

This essay aims at verifying the existence of a line of continuity between the artistic genre of the danse macabre and the legal implications of death in the historical evolution of the relationship between law and religion. Although the institution originated in medieval Europe and bears some similarities to rituals in different geographical areas, the reinterpretation used to address it is that provided by the liberal publisher Giuseppe Vallardi, a Lombard scholar from nineteenth-century Milan. It is no coincidence that this rediscovery took place at a time when tensions between the state and the Church had not yet subsided and the representation of death and its rites constituted, to all intents and purposes, the symbolic and legal terrain of relations between the powers.