Lolzapalooza, Batgirl. I like your style! Very funny.
Turn the hysteria up to 11!
Posted on 09/06/2013 7:15:37 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
A relic hunter dubbed 'Indiana Bones' has lifted the lid on a macabre collection of 400-year-old jewel-encrusted skeletons unearthed in churches across Europe.
Art historian Paul Koudounaris hunted down and photographed dozens of gruesome skeletons in some of the world's most secretive religious establishments.
Incredibly, some of the skeletons, said to be the remains of early Christian martyrs, were even found hidden away in lock-ups and containers.
They are now the subject of a new book, which sheds light on the forgotten ornamented relics for the first time.
Thousands of skeletons were dug up from Roman catacombs in the 16th century and installed in towns around Germany, Austria and Switzerland on the orders of the Vatican.
They were sent to Catholic churches and religious houses to replace the relics destroyed in the wake of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.
Mistaken for the remains of early Christian martyrs, the morbid relics, known as the Catacomb Saints, became shrines reminding of the spiritual treasures of the afterlife.
They were also symbols of the Catholic Church's newly found strength in previously Protestant areas.
Each one was painstakingly decorated in thousands of pounds worth of gold, silver and gems by devoted followers before being displayed in church niches.
Some took up to five years to decorate.
They were renamed as saints, although none of them qualified for the title under the strict rules of the Catholic church which require saints to have been canonised.
But by the 19th century they had become morbid reminders of an embarrassing past and many were stripped of their honours and discarded.
Mr Koudounaris' new book, Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, is the first time the skeletons have appeared in print.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
You are correct, I’ve been following this thread all morning and is both amusing and horrifying.
I have often said that the deeper you go into the 2nd and 3rd world the more pagan Roman Catholicism becomes. On this very thread it is trotted out right here in the good old USA!
All that’s left for us to do is eat the popcorn!
Well, if the words of Jesus are offensive to your sensibilities, ........
Why not ask Salvation, I was quoting her.
Salvation wrote this, ""I find this story very hard to believe. Do you have a parallel source other than the British source? Isn’t this the one that hates Catholics anyway?"".
Many Catholics posting on this thread have expressed shame or embarrassment, even disbelief that it could be real, about this story, yet you ignore them and won't defend it to them, why not, why didn't you ping Salvation and ask her about why she disbelieves it?
By the way, that post is a long distance from your previous, upbeat tone of joy and praise for this practice and you even coveted the jewels with a hope that you could get some of them in the future so that you "can take it with you".
Salvation, why do you disbelieve this story?
Lolzapalooza, Batgirl. I like your style! Very funny.
Turn the hysteria up to 11!
You mean the Bible that King James handed out at Pentecost?
Honest to goodness, as cool as I think this story is, in the back of my mind I'm wondering about the condition of the jewelry. It looks perfect - like it could be sitting in a jeweler's case. But I don't know anything about oxidation rates in Medieval graves so I'm giving the story the benefit of the doubt just because I think it's so darn cool.
Read the article and explain how some grocer or any other guy burying his wife with her jewelry has anything to do with this revelation of centuries of this practice from the catholic church.
Wow, like garlic to a vampire.
Why?
We agree 8-)
Where's that in the Bible?
Thanks and I hear what you are trying to say...sincerely.
You said: “...the Catholic church might have a lot of saints—but they havent always behaved “saintly.”
I would restate that that PEOPLE in the Church haven’t always behaved in a saintly manner. This is true of any group of human beings because we are all sinners. This is not stated as any excuse. Horrific things have been done by those who have called themselves “Catholic” through the ages. We sadly but honestly acknowledge that. There were, however, always those Catholics who continued to live virtuous lives, following the will of God during the same time periods.
You said: “Hate and persecution? On the RCC? For 2,000 years?
You might want re-read history.”
I used to teach history (accurate history and not the more current forms of revised history). The Catholic Church has, indeed, been the object of hate and persecution since its beginning.
You say that Catholics are embarrassed about this and others are saying that Catholics are defending it. You guys need to make up your minds. I have no idea who Salvation is and I don’t think I need to answer every post.
I’m sad that you are all so lacking in humor that you can’t see my, admittedly, weak joke about taking it with you. I’ve looked at the photos again and I still think they are amazing and beautiful as well as grotesque. I’m hoping Camille Paglia will write something about this since she’s the best art critic after Sister Wendy.
I just showed the photos to my Italian-American husband and he shrugged and said, “So what’s the problem?” This is because we are used to images like this. We also like the images and are willing to roast in hell for it!
That is awesome! Beautiful tributes.
It’s in the red type section.
I thought I did, but I'm willing to try again.
1) Many people (possibly including you) believe that it is morally permissible for a man to bury his wife's corpse, which is adorned with a gold necklace, rings, and ear-rings. Certainly, Catholics see this as morally permissible.
2) Some Christians in the 15th century adorned the corpses of people who they presumed to be saints, with jewelry. You believe this practice to be wrong. Catholics believe this to be morally permissible.
3) I have a hard time seeing a difference in principle. Apparently, you see a contradiction somewhere.
Gold doesn’t oxidize, does it? The jewelry looks very medieval to me. I’ve been doing lots of study on medieval history these days and I recognize some of designs as being very old. If it’s a hoax, it’s a good one!
And, of course, there is sex abuse in the yeshivas. It’s sad, it’s tragic and it seems to be universal.
And no offense, but I’ve never met a protestant choir master/organist who wasn’t as gay as they come!
I have never heard of anything like this creepy story.
You almost seem to be trying to pretend that this story doesn’t exist as you keep trying to dismiss it in the strangest ways, now trying to compare it to burying someone with their jewelry and moving on, that isn’t what this story is about, this isn’t about individuals who are also Catholics, throwing piles of jewelry into coffins before burial.
This is about the church itself, the bosses, removing from burial, then shipping the skeletons out to Churches around the world and vast treasures being used to decorate the skeletons over periods of up to five years, to build shrines for use in church ceremonies and rituals.
This is grotesque and primitive.
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