Bone chapels and their strange art
In catacombs, crypts, and ossuaries, I’ve seen the ugliness of death transformed into something beautiful.
The Sedlec Ossuary, beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, in the Czech Republic (Pedro Krtička / Creative Commons)
Death hovers above my head. Scythe in one hand and scales in the other, he stares down at me. Skeletons greet me, bowing their heads and imploring me to pray. There are bones before me, bones behind me, bones above me. Some of those bones even take flight. A few of them gather into the shape of an hourglass. My time, it seems, is almost up.
This encounter was no mere dream, no prophetic vision. I saw death—and it forever changed how I saw my life.
After exploring a few churches in Rome, I’d seen a fair share of tombs and relics, even an occasional body. But nothing could prepare me for what I saw in Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. The church, built for a Franciscan order of monks called the Capuchins, is fairly standard: an altar, pews, paintings adorning the walls. In the Capuchin Crypt, however, six small chapels feature an entirely different kind of art.
