So, as you can probably imagine with that amount of deaths, bodies were everywhere 一 piled up in the streets and in varying stages of decomposition. They didn’t understand how disease transmission took place and the absence of vaccines and modern medicine. Starting from 1346, the Black Death claimed around 75 to 200 million lives in its whole run. Ranging from mainly diabolical entities, to simply diligent psychopomps 一 the concept of the Grim Reaper is certainly nothing new to us.īut, it was the 14th century Afro-Eurasia bubonic plague pandemic 一 called The Black Death 一 that forever changed the game for what we now know as the Grim Reaper. Sure, different embodiments of death have been present in various cultures around the world since the dawn of time. However, where the origin of the concept, itself, is concerned, all would be credited to the then-worst pandemic in history. It’s not as if he’s the one calling the shots.Įven so, the Grim Reaper 一 also known as the Angel of Death 一 and the imagery he carries still sends chills down our spines up to this day.Ī recognizable horror icon in modern pop culture 一 where did it all start for Death, personified? The Origin of the Grim Reaperīelieve it or not, the name Grim Reaper didn’t make an appearance until the year 1847, with The Circle of Human Life 一 Robert Menzies’s partial translation of an 1841 German book, called Stunden Christlicher Andacht. To be fair, whenever he comes, he’s just performing his duty.Īnd it is to guide departed souls to the place after death to maintain the order of nature. Strangely enough, this spectral entity really isn’t as evil as he looks. On the contrary, others say that nothing but a dark void lurks beneath the wrap.īut, whichever depiction you might choose to go with, the job of the Grim Reaper remains the same. Some works portray the Grim Reaper as a skeletal figure, draped in a loose, hooded cloak. We don’t just say, “Who is the Grim Reaper?”īut we also ask, “What does it represent?”Īnd to answer that 一 well, the Grim Reaper is the best-known personification of death.īasically, the image that automatically comes to your mind when you think of dying. Often depicted sporting a long, black, and tattered robe, as well as carrying a scythe while traveling on the back of a ghostly white horse, the Grim Reaper is as much as a what, as it is a matter of who.
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