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During the Renaissance, Christians frequently depicted the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the personifications of disease, famine, war, and conquest. Nearly half of all children died before the age of five and ten percent of women died of childbirth or of pregnancy related complications. Wars consumed the continent during the bloody sixteenth century, thanks to advances in military technology and religious violence. With no knowledge of the cause of disease and absent antibiotics, disease was as terrifying as mass murder. In this class, we explore death, dying, health, and hope in early modern Europe. How did death and the fear of death shape society? How did it affect politics and economics, gender and family? At the center of death – and life - was religion; in this chaotic world, disease was a punishment and God the only cure; as a result, we will explore how religion was the other side of the coin of death and disease. We will learn how to read primary sources of Renaissance people grappling with their mortality and examine Renaissance art. In the process, we will investigate one of the biggest questions human beings confront: What is the meaning of life in the face of death?