Bejeweled human skeletons galore!

[Maastricht]

Link to story with strange, strange pictures.

The skeletons were the “catacomb saints,” once-revered holy objects regarded by 16th- and 17th-century Catholics as local protectors and personifications of the glory of the afterlife. Some of them still remain tucked away in certain churches, while others have been swept away by time, forever gone. Who they were in life is impossible to know. “That was part of this project’s appeal to me,” Koudounaris says. “The strange enigma that these skeletons could have been anyone, but they were pulled out of the ground and raised to the heights of glory.”

[Sudden_Kestrel]

Wow, those skellies are sporting some bling!

How come when somebody else unearths a grave and does something creepy with the bones it’s abuse of a corpse, but when the Catholics do it, it becomes “the heights of glory?”

@Smithsonian blog post

In Northern Europe—especially in Germany, where anti-Catholic sentiment was most fervent—Catholic churches had suffered from plunderers and vandals during the Protestant Revolution over the past several decades. Those churches’ sacred relics had largely been lost or destroyed. The newly discovered holy remains, however, could restock the shelves and restore the morale of those parishes that had been ransacked.

“Hey Antonio, we’re almost out of martyr skulls! Bring up some of the ones we found by the vineyard.”

[Balance]

Looks like some time traveler’s kid lost a Bedazzler.

[ralph124c]

This stirred a memory-I knew a woman who went on a tour of Germany. I recall seeing such a skeleton from a church in Bavaria-it was St. Placidus.
He was attired as a Roman soldier.
very interesting,very strange. Are these real jewels? I imagine many of these relics were plundered for the valuable gold and jewels.

[the_diego]

I thought it was a Damien Hirst creation.

[MaxTheVool]

If all the gold and jewels are real, those things must be worth a MINT. How have they not been randomly stolen by now? Seems like it would be trivial for a neighborhood teenager to smash a window and grab the stuff and run…

[Maastricht]

@MaxTheVool

Seems like it would be trivial for a neighborhood teenager to smash a window and grab the stuff and run…

Would you have had the guts to do so when you were a teen? Talking about it, maybe, daring each other, sure. But to seriously go up to that grinning skull with dead waxy eyes… In the middle of the night in a deserted church… and it takes some careful prying to get the jewels off, because they are sewn to fabric wrapped around the bones. So you could’t grab a jewel and run. No, I think this would be too creepy even for the most hardened of burglar.

[aruvqan]

@MaxTheVool

If all the gold and jewels are real, those things must be worth a MINT. How have they not been randomly stolen by now? Seems like it would be trivial for a neighborhood teenager to smash a window and grab the stuff and run…

I don’t think they are more than ‘historically’ valuable, many of them look like gilt pot metal settings, cut glass and semiprecious stuff - garnet, amethyst, quartz. Stuff that we today would pick up off Fire Mountain Gems.

[Alessan]

@Maastricht

Link to story with strange, strange pictures.

Nice. So what’s their challenge rating?

[Chronos]

I was thinking the same thing, Alessan. Except you phrased it better.

[Maastricht]

That is a Dungeons and Dragons reference, right?

[sailor]

Reminds me of the Italian mummies
http://www3.sympatico.ca/tapholov/pages/mummies.htm
Catacombe dei Cappuccini - Wikipedia
File:Monks' Corridor.jpg - Wikipedia
File:New Corridor.jpg - Wikipedia

[Musicat]

@MaxTheVool

If all the gold and jewels are real, those things must be worth a MINT. How have they not been randomly stolen by now? Seems like it would be trivial for a neighborhood teenager to smash a window and grab the stuff and run…

But they are cursed! The last teenager to do that was run over by a speeding hearse as he ran away.