Physeter
Puritan Board Freshman
This is one curiosity I have found about the Catholic church is its ossuaries and dead bodies in the churches. Other religions have ossuaries too, but I find it curious that the Catholic Church, an institution that claims Christ would have these macabre monuments.
Here is a list of them. You can Google or Bing them.
Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, Rome Italy The crypt is fashioned into a macabre display. The ceiling is ornamented with pieces of the spine, ribs and pelvises. It contains the bones of over 4,000 Capuchin friars, collected between the years of 1528 and 1870. They are fashioned into decorative displays in the Baroque and Rococo style
Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic This ossuary is estimated to contain the bones of between 40,000 and 70,000 people. The bones have in many cases been arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. Among these furnishings are chandeliers. There is even a coat of arms in there made of bones. The whole thing is pretty grotesque.
Skull Chapel, Czermna, Poland. The whole interior of this chapel is bones. It was built in 1776 by a Czech local parish priest, Wacław Tomaszek. He collected bones of people who died during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), three Silesian Wars (1740–1763), as well as of people who died because of cholera epidemics, plague, syphilis and hunger. He did this with the help of a grave digger J. Langer and J. Schmidt. He was inspired to do this after a visit to the massive Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini ossuary.
Capela dos Ossos, Portugall, is pretty grotesque Not only is it filled with bones, but it has two bodies hanging from ropes, one an adult and the other a child. It was built as an affront to the reformation in the 16th century by a Franciscan monk.
Now for the last one a corpse--Bernadette Soubirous enshrined at the Convent of St. Gildard of Nevers. Also in Lourdes, there is a reliquary containing a 'relic' of Bernadette, one of her ribs, at the altar of St. Joseph in the Crypt. The feast of Bernadette is the 18th. February. Her relics is carried in procession through the town from the Parish Church to the Grotto. Idolatry anyone?
In the bible bones and dead bodies are associated with uncleanness. They were used by the Jews to defile an altar.
Some examples of that.
Ezekiel 6:5-- And I will lay the dead carcases of the children of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your altars.
2 Kings 23:16--And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.
And this scripture here is very unfavorable toward the practice of making bones or dead bodies as an object of veneration.
Ezekiel 43:7-- And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and my holy name, shall the house of Israel no more defile, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, nor by the carcases of their kings in their high places.
Here is a list of them. You can Google or Bing them.
Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, Rome Italy The crypt is fashioned into a macabre display. The ceiling is ornamented with pieces of the spine, ribs and pelvises. It contains the bones of over 4,000 Capuchin friars, collected between the years of 1528 and 1870. They are fashioned into decorative displays in the Baroque and Rococo style
Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic This ossuary is estimated to contain the bones of between 40,000 and 70,000 people. The bones have in many cases been arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. Among these furnishings are chandeliers. There is even a coat of arms in there made of bones. The whole thing is pretty grotesque.
Skull Chapel, Czermna, Poland. The whole interior of this chapel is bones. It was built in 1776 by a Czech local parish priest, Wacław Tomaszek. He collected bones of people who died during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), three Silesian Wars (1740–1763), as well as of people who died because of cholera epidemics, plague, syphilis and hunger. He did this with the help of a grave digger J. Langer and J. Schmidt. He was inspired to do this after a visit to the massive Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini ossuary.
Capela dos Ossos, Portugall, is pretty grotesque Not only is it filled with bones, but it has two bodies hanging from ropes, one an adult and the other a child. It was built as an affront to the reformation in the 16th century by a Franciscan monk.
Now for the last one a corpse--Bernadette Soubirous enshrined at the Convent of St. Gildard of Nevers. Also in Lourdes, there is a reliquary containing a 'relic' of Bernadette, one of her ribs, at the altar of St. Joseph in the Crypt. The feast of Bernadette is the 18th. February. Her relics is carried in procession through the town from the Parish Church to the Grotto. Idolatry anyone?
In the bible bones and dead bodies are associated with uncleanness. They were used by the Jews to defile an altar.
Some examples of that.
Ezekiel 6:5-- And I will lay the dead carcases of the children of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your altars.
2 Kings 23:16--And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.
And this scripture here is very unfavorable toward the practice of making bones or dead bodies as an object of veneration.
Ezekiel 43:7-- And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and my holy name, shall the house of Israel no more defile, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, nor by the carcases of their kings in their high places.