Skull Church

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simpleas

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I didn’t know where to put this, so sorry if it’s in the wrong forum.

I never heard about these churches until recently, I’m sure many of you have?

While I get they remind us of our morality, I still cringe at the pictures…

So many people on display, with bits of their bones placed all around.

I wonder is it also a form of laughing at life and death, that as we all know death will come to us and this is what we will become, but what of the resurrection?

“What you are now we used to be, what we are now you will be…”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_Crypt
 
I found this in St. Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in their sins!
Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.
No second death can do them harm.
 
In all truth,

I would like to have a skull as many of the saints are depicted with. Maybe that is just a symbolic gesture by the artist, but it seems an excellent reminder of the fleeting nature of this life here below.

I guess a reproduction would do, but I think they are quite expensive- the realistic ones i mean.

Might freak guests out, too. That’s ok. 🙂
 
JamalChristophr said:
In all truth,

I would like to have a skull as many of the saints are depicted with. Maybe that is just a symbolic gesture by the artist, but it seems an excellent reminder of the fleeting nature of this life here below.

I guess a reproduction would do, but I think they are quite expensive- the realistic ones i mean.

Might freak guests out, too. That’s ok. 🙂
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I imagine that plastic skulls can be had from medical-school suppliers, but would indeed be expensive.

To keep a real one would, IMNAAHO, be disrespectful to the human being whose mind it once held. Medieval saints could get them because of the overflowing ancient cemeteries they lived on top of. But absent such a circumstance, the remnants of a human being should remain in a sacred spot, and preferably with the rest of the body; not on somebody’s bookshelf.

You wouldn’t want someone to rise from Death headless (or for that to be done to you) 🙂

ICXC NIKA
 
It does seem a bit macabre. Did the people give their permission I wonder?
 
7_Sorrows said:
It does seem a bit macabre. Did the people give their permission I wonder?
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Well, they’re the bodies of Monks retained in a blessed chapel, in earth specially brought over from the Holyland by order of a Pope. I think by their (and our?) standards they’ve probably done fairly well! Or are you talking about the skulls carried by medieval saints?

It’s ancient Egyptian Mummies I feel sorry for - all that effort to have the ultimate in deluxe tombs, just to be dug up centuries later and bunged in display boxes for school kids to make jokes about… oh, and any poor corpse that’s ever been dug up to be horribly misinterpreted by presumptuous researchers for public television in shows like Time Team or Meet the Ancestors… :o
 
Mystic_Banana said:
Well, they’re the bodies of Monks retained in a blessed chapel, in earth specially brought over from the Holyland by order of a Pope. I think by their (and our?) standards they’ve probably done fairly well! Or are you talking about the skulls carried by medieval saints?

It’s ancient Egyptian Mummies I feel sorry for - all that effort to have the ultimate in deluxe tombs, just to be dug up centuries later and bunged in display boxes for school kids to make jokes about… oh, and any poor corpse that’s ever been dug up to be horribly misinterpreted by presumptuous researchers for public television in shows like Time Team or Meet the Ancestors… :o
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The deluxe tombs had almost always been looted long ago, and sometimes, hands broken off the mummies to steal gold jewelry.

In the 1800s, there were so many mummies that many were used for engine fuel in British Egypt! So much for life everlasting that requires the original body…

At least modern research treats the remnants of human life with respect.

ICXC NIKA
 
Should I even ask what those two green trees are on either side of the altar?

:bigyikes:
 
GEddie said:
The deluxe tombs had almost always been looted long ago, and sometimes, hands broken off the mummies to steal gold jewelry.

In the 1800s, there were so many mummies that many were used for engine fuel in British Egypt! So much for life everlasting that requires the original body…

At least modern research treats the remnants of human life with respect.

ICXC NIKA
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They used mummies for fuel? You are kidding…please…you are right?
 
JamalChristophr said:
Should I even ask what those two green trees are on either side of the altar?

:bigyikes:
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The trees in genesis you mean? I was trying to find out what that particular “display” symbolises, with the arms in the middle. Noticed a link to a youtube tour, not brave enough…
 
simpleas said:
The trees in genesis you mean? I was trying to find out what that particular “display” symbolises, with the arms in the middle. Noticed a link to a youtube tour, not brave enough…
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Well, I mean I was curious what body part they could be made of. 🙂
 
GEddie said:
The deluxe tombs had almost always been looted long ago, and sometimes, hands broken off the mummies to steal gold jewelry.

In the 1800s, there were so many mummies that many were used for engine fuel in British Egypt! So much for life everlasting that requires the original body…

At least modern research treats the remnants of human life with respect.

ICXC NIKA
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As far as I know, centuries of tomb robbers had nothing on those British and German Archaeologists!

Somehow, it doesn’t really surprise me to learn that! :rolleyes:

Really? Still digs them up willy nilly regardless of the original inhabitants wishes…
 
simpleas said:
They used mummies for fuel? You are kidding…please…you are right?
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Not kidding. This was attested by Mark Twain in the mid 1800s.

Whether **he **was kidding remains Snopes-indeterminate. As do reports of mummy-windings made into paper, or the bodies proper ground up for superstitious purposes, etc.

ICXC NIKA
 
simpleas said:
They used mummies for fuel? You are kidding…please…you are right?
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Not only were they used for fuel, in the 19th Century mummies were burned and the ashes were used as an artists pigment to make a brownish black color called Mummy,
 
The Victorians were a weird bunch.

As for mummies being used as fuel for steam engine locomotives, I have read this somewhere, probably National Geographic. Not sure about the source.
 
George_Stegmeir said:
Not only were they used for fuel, in the 19th Century mummies were burned and the ashes were used as an artists pigment to make a brownish black color called Mummy,
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Exactly. And in the Middle Ages, mummies were actually ground up and made into medicine. In fact, that’s why they’re called ‘mummies’: the Arabic word for asphalt/bitumen was mūmiyyah (people mistook the blackened features of mummies to be due to bitumen; while it isn’t as vital an ingredient as once thought, bitumen was apparently used in some mummies, so the belief is not entirely false), and people believed that asphalt was medicinal. In fact, they thought that the mūmiyyah harvested from these corpses was more effective than regular bitumen.

So even back then, people did know about mummies, but they didn’t study them so much as harvest them. (Some vendors actually apparently cut the corners by using any corpse they could find - not necessarily Egyptian mummies.)
 
I have visited the Capuchin Crypt in Rome. Seems abnormal to be honest. Strange too. Not something i would like to see again!
 
There’s probably some relation to Ezekiel 37 and the story of the dry bones, and there may be a connection to the Mexican tradition of Dias de Los Muertos.
 
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