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 ...
I'm not "you guys" and if you read the thread you will read the embarrassment and defensiveness and even disbelief at this disturbing news.
Salvation herself has posted her disbelief at this revelation.
When did you first see one of these drenched in gold and jewels, skeletons that are mentioned in this article? Where did you see it? When did you first learn of this?
I guess for all your blabbing on this thread, you are doing very little reading of other posts. I am not going to explain - again - trips to Italy, Sicily or Mexico. Or the beautiful but grotesque images in medieval art. Probably most of the Catholics who are “shocked, shocked” by these images are either very young, converts or very uneducated in Catholic art.
Another insult, and you refuse to challenge Catholics on their disbelief and embarrassment at learning about this.
What I asked you was when you learned specifically about what is described and shown in photos in this article.
You knew about this specific practice and have seen these actual figures? Could you have told us about the international shipping out of these skeletons by the Vatican and the years of being adorned with treasure, to be used in rituals by the churches, before this thread?
You should ask her why she is in disbelief of this practice.
Oh, stop your ridiculous demands. I don’t need to answer you about anything.
That seemed to be answer enough, and asking the question was fitting, not ridiculous.
Throughout the thread you have been the only person trying to give the impression that this was old news, common knowledge, just everyday Catholic stuff that most people already know and even seen themselves.
I think it's funny, in a Nightmare on Elm Street kind of way...
They dig up thousands of these ghoulish, rotted corpses, send them all over the world, adorn them with gold and jewels, prop them up for the congregation to see, as an aid to worship...
And doggone if the Catholics don't worship them...
And people balk when you connect that religion with the Whore of Revelation 17...
“this seems worse than anything that I have have heard of from any televangelist”
Yeah, at least the scummy televangelists are using their profits to benefit a living person... even if it is just themselves. This is just a total waste.
I think you have outed yourself enough about your relationship to truth and honesty.
So this story is new to you, you did not know this, yet you have been using that as part of your defensive arguments upon reading this article.
You did not know about this, and this is new history to you is what I think we can conclude and what I suppose you are now admitting.
I think it is worse than that, look at post 52, this seems to have shaken some of our proudest Catholics.
Honestly, I don’t know what you are talking about. You’re twisting my words. I expressed interest in this from the top of the thread - no where did I say that I knew about this particular story. Only that I understood and could interpret the images correctly.
For those who think this is a hoax, by the way, just google it. These skeletons are real, known to many, they are in Germany.
Just checking out Latin American “Santa Muerte” - Saint Death. They don’t use real skeletons apparently, but it’s very close to the Daily Mail images. Then let’s all have a nervous breakdown over that!
Headquarters took the skeletons from entombment and distributed them internationally to be used for these shrines and rituals.
>> “Where’s that in the Bible?” <<
.
Acts 7:48-50
Acts 17: 24-25
And numerous other places.
Yehova hates demonic palaces pretending to be the house of God. The vast wealth that was diverted to those vile buildings rightfully belongs to the poor.
You can include Rick Warren, David Jeremiah, and Joel Osteen in that too.
As loath as I am to get in the middle of this, I have to point out that not everyone buried in the catacombs was a martyr.
“The gold wasted on these martyrs is the same as the perfume wasted on Jesus feet....wasted on Christ, and for that, these martyrs would have appreciated the nuns intentions....”
I hate to break it to you, but the martyrs had already passed this mortal coil. The only thing the nuns were adorning was dust, so the “perfume” argument is spurious.
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