A strange tale is the one about the saints who lived in the catacombs of Northern Europe. It has its roots in the post-Reformation faith crisis that caused a sharp shift back toward showy materialism in worship.
In the belief that they were Christian martyrs, the jeweled skeletons were presented as replacements to churches that had lost their saint relics during the Reformation after being found in catacombs beneath Rome in 1578. But for the most part, nobody knew who they were. The receiving churches then spent years lavishing the revered skeletal strangers with diamond and gold clothes, sometimes even filling their eye sockets and adorning their teeth. However, due of the enormous sum of money and luxury they represented, they were quite humiliating when the Enlightenment arrived, and many of them were hidden away or disappeared.
Vineyard workers in Rome found a passage on May 31, 1578, that led to a vast network of long-forgotten catacombs beneath Via Salaria. Between the first and fifth centuries AD, the Coemeterium Jordanorum (Jordanian Cemetery) and its adjacent catacombs served as early Christian cemeteries.
When these catacombs were found, the Catholic Church had been battling the Reformation for many years. Even while some human bones had been cherished for millennia as holy relics, Protestant Reformers thought keeping relics was idolatry. Even the remains of saints were to disintegrate into dust. The Reformation saw the burial, alteration, or destruction of countless artifacts.
The Counter-Reformation employed the importation of recent holy relics into German-speaking countries as a tactic. Relics have long been a favorite among the laity. Where would they get fresh saints to replace what had been lost?
The bones themselves were discovered in the Roman catacombs in the year 1578. The underground catacombs were discovered, raided by tomb raiders, and the bones, skeletons, clavicles, and other relics of victims were sold to various Catholic churches as relics of martyrs throughout the course of the ensuing decades.
They constructed the clothing for the catacomb bare-bones (known in German as katakombenheiligen) and added the priceless and cut stones for ornamentation. These diligent, sympathetic nuns were extremely competent women. Whose elderly bones were decorated in this manner? In a box bearing the name of the martyred saint, the bones were brought over from Rome.
Without a doubt, they were status symbols. Latin names were given to the skeletons, and they were encrusted with gold and jewels from the skull to the metatarsal. Though they varied, the embellishments were typically ornate. The stones on the skeletons’ velvet and silk robes were genuine or pricey replicas, and they were stitched with gold thread. To a few chosen, even silver plate armor was available.
At 1676 Shaylyn Esposito, Saint Coronatus entered a monastery in Heiligkreuztal, Germany.
It is disappointing to think about how few saints have endured to the present day given the time, resources, and dedication needed to establish them. Since they were considered morbid and degrading during the nineteenth century, many were stripped of their diamonds and buried or destroyed. Only around 10% of the catacomb saints that formerly dotted Europe are still standing, and only a few are open to the public.
Source: arkeonews.net
