The well-known chapel of bones is back in action and became one of the most trending topics on social media.
The “Chapel of Bones” is also known as Capela dos Ossos in Evora, Portugal. It is a small portion of a large bone-free church complex, the Igreja de Sao Francisco. Inside, it is lined with more than 5,000 skulls plus assorted other human bones.
Recently, it became one of the trending pictures on social media. The post garnered more than 20,000 views and was labeled as the “Chapel of Bones.”
Social media users zoom in on the pictures as it brings them to the medieval period, the pebbled texture of the walls resolves into the wallpaper of bones and empty-eyed skulls. The monk who took care of the chapel for so many years couldn’t have foreseen it.
These bones once rested in the churchyard around Igreja de Sao Francisco but in the 16th century, the graveyard was running out of places so a Franciscan monk who ran the place came up with the idea of exhuming old, long defleshed bones and cementing them into the ossuary.
This solution has a dual purpose of preventing the bones from the day of resurrection. Inside the chapel hangs a poem written by parish priest Antonio da Ascencao Tales who held that position in the 1840s.
Priest Tales said: “Recall how many have passed from this world, reflect on your similar end, there is good reason to reflect if only all did the same.”
The well-known chapel of bones also houses two partially skeletal, partially mummified bodies of one adult and one child, who was hung from the ceiling before but are now placed in glass cases.
As it became viral on social media, people responded to the chapel in some fairly different ways. One commenter said: “I am sort of sad there wasn’t the budget to use this location for the City of Bones in Shadowhunter’s series.”
A second one wrote: “I think I need a trip to Portugal.” A third commenter loved the chapel so much they said: “Is it bad that my first thought was “this would be a gorgeous place for a wedding?”
While another commented that it “looks like most the underground tunnels in assassin’s creed unity.” Some were more contemplative about the chapel, saying: “This seems like a place to just sit and respect.”
Others were in complete disbelief saying: “Well I wanna know if this is really like are they really real skulls?”, with someone answering the question saying: “Yes. They are, really real, skulls.”
Portugal is only one of the places where people got a hankering to build with bones. The Capuchin Crypt in Rome is a 17th-century chapel decorated with the bones of some 3,700 Capuchin friars. The said building has a number of rooms with names like “The Crypt of the Pelvises” and in one, robed skeletons pose with scythes and scales, representing death and judgment.
The record holder in the category of interior design with human bones is the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic. The church was constructed in 1,400bc and the land was covered with soil from the Church of The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, it is said to be the spot where Jesus Christ was crucified.
According to the Ossuary’s website, this holy soil made the church a popular place to be buried over time, as it became overcrowded, bones were moved into the church. In 1870, a local woodcarver named Frantisek Rint was given the task to organize them.
He created elaborate displays, including a bone chandelier and elaborate crest made of tibia, fibula, and femurs. Bones from more than 40,000 individuals are said to decorate the Sedlec Ossuary.