Oath of the Reaper 死神之誓

The Paladins, also called the Twelve Peers (French: Douze Pairs), are twelve legendary knights, the foremost members of Charlemagne's court in the 8th century. They first appear in the medieval (12th century) chanson de geste cycle of the Matter of France, where they play a similar role to the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian romance. In these romantic portrayals, the chivalric paladins represent Christianity against a Saracen (Muslim) invasion of Europe. The names of the paladins vary between sources, but there are always twelve of them (a number with Christian associations) led by Roland (spelled Orlando in later Italian sources). The paladins' most influential appearance is in The Song of Roland, written between 1050 and 1115, which narrates the heroic death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.

The legend is based on the historical Umayyad invasion of Gaul and subsequent conflict in the Marca Hispanica between the Frankish Empire and the Emirate of Córdoba. The term paladin is from Old French, deriving from the Latin comes palatinus (count palatine), a title given to close retainers.

The paladins remained a popular subject throughout medieval French literature. Literature of the Italian Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) introduced more fantasy elements into the legend, which later became a popular subject for operas in the Baroque music of the 16th and 17th centuries. During the 19th and early 20th centuries the term was reused outside fiction for small numbers of close military confidants serving national leaders. Modern depictions of paladins are often an individual knight-errant holy warrior or combat healer, influenced by the paladin character class that appeared in Dungeons & Dragons in 1975.

Most paladins serve actual gods, though a few act as champions of a primordial, demon, or devil though in the latter two cases they must commit atrocities such as the sacrifice of sapients in order to retain their powers.

A paladin belonging to the Oath of The Reaper strives to collect and return unfairly placed souls. The paladins who fallow the oath of the reaper will collect the souls trapped in an object or even their own bodies. This can involve destroying magical objects or constructs powered by souls of the dead or freeing spirits trapped on the mortal plane such as a banshee, ghost, wraith, or specter.

Though the exact words and strictures of the Oath of the Reaper vary, paladins of this oath share these tenets.

Continuance. When you begin the harvest of a soul, you cannot shy away or abandon the job.

Cycle of Life. You will not allow the unwanted resurrection of those who have fallen, even if they are family, friend, or loved one, as everyone must decide weather they wish to leave.

Allow passage You will not allow the continued un-life of beings staying trapped on the mortal plane, you cannot force someone to choose weather they live or die, but you can give them the option.

In the TV series Cursed, the Red Paladins are a group of purists who seek the extinction of the Fey, as well as the exinction of magic altogether. These Red Paladins are monks, but nothing like the ones we know in real life. They take commands from a religious zealot — Father Carden and are complicit with King Uther.

The Grim Reaper is a popular personification of death in Western culture in the form of a hooded skeletal figure wearing a black robe and carrying a scythe. Since the 14th century, European art connected each of these various physical features to death, though the name "Grim Reaper" and the artistic popularity of all the features combined emerged as late as the 19th century. Sometimes, particularly when winged, the character is equated with the Angel of Death. The scythe as an artistic symbol of death has deliberate agricultural associations since the medieval period. The tool symbolizes the removal of human souls from their bodies in huge numbers, with the analogy being to a farmer (reaper) cutting through large swaths of grain crops during harvest.

The Grim Reaper is a blend of various medieval or older European personifications of death, with its earliest direct inputs evident in art of 14th-century Europe in connection with the bubonic plague pandemic then ravaging the continent. Several "Triumph of Death" paintings from Italy in that century show the character of death as either an animate skeleton or a human-like figure with wings carrying a scythe. A horseback rider killing humans with an outstretched weapon is another common symbol for mass die-offs in this era, as is the Danse Macabre, a group of dancing skeletons leading people to their graves: also a possible input.

Romance language cultures, like in Italy and France, traditionally tend to imagine death as female, while Slavic and Germanic language cultures, like English-speaking ones, tend to imagine death as male. Time and the harvest were already artistically connected with death in the medieval period. During the Renaissance, an early Grim Reaper image arose that conflated the aforementioned features of skeletons and scythes, possibly further conflating the ancient Greek deity Chronos, god of time, and the similarly-named Cronus, a Titan associated with the harvest, both of whom are also frequently depicted wielding a scythe or sickle. Thanatos, the Greek god of death, may also be related, though he has few physical features of note.

In a church in England, a wooden figurine dating from 1640 portrayed a hooded and robed skeleton carrying a scythe and hourglass. The color black for the Grim Reaper's cloak may be as recent as the 19th century, related to the wearing of black at funerals.

he full Grim Reaper appearance (hooded skeleton, black robe, and scythe) became common by the mid-19th century, for instance as described in multiple Edgar Allan Poe short stories. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come has a similar look in the classic 1843 novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: silent and wearing a black cloak that conceals its whole face and body, with its only visible body part being a single gesturing hand.

The term "Grim Reaper" only first emerged in English print in the 1840s.

Antonio Monti and Moreta Montemurro are veteran costumers at the Venice Carnevale. They are well known for their Venetian costumes often and always with a dark theme.

This year, Antonio comes as the Grim Reaper and Moreta as the Red Paladin.

Moreta comes with a book similar to a copy of the Codex Gigas ("Giant Book"; Czech: Obří kniha) - the largest extant medieval illuminated manuscript in the world, at a length of 92 cm (36 in). It is a Romanesque Latin Bible, with other texts, some secular, added in the second half of the book. Very large illuminated bibles were typical of Romanesque monastic book production, but even among these, the page-size of the Codex Gigas is exceptional. The manuscript is also known as the Devil's Bible due to its highly unusual full-page portrait of Satan, the Devil, and the legend surrounding the book's creation. Apart from the famous page with an image of the Devil, the book is not very heavily illustrated with figurative miniatures, compared to other grand contemporary Bibles. The codex has a unified look as the nature of the writing is unchanged throughout, showing no signs of age, disease, or mold on the part of the scribe. This may have led to the belief that the whole book was written in a very short time. According to one version of a legend already recorded in the Middle Ages, the scribe was a Christian monk who broke his monastic vows and was sentenced to be walled up alive. To escape death, he promised to create, in one night, a book to glorify the monastery forever, including all human knowledge. Near midnight, he became so desperate that he prayed to Lucifer to help him finish the book in exchange for his soul. The Devil completed the manuscript, and the monk added the Devil's picture as a tribute. In tests to recreate the work, it is estimated that reproducing the calligraphy alone (without the illustrations or embellishments) would have taken twenty years of non-stop writing.

This is the dark side of the Venice Carnevale. There is always quite a few costumers that come in this theme/ subgroup. Usually they are veterans at the Venice Carnevale and they make great photo subjects.