The remains of these nameless people were wrapped in a thin, translucent cloth and covered with gold on top. The skulls were adorned with crowns and tiaras, lavishly studded with pearls and precious stones. Thick gold and silver rings were strung on long rotted fingers. Eye sockets, teeth, ribs, jaws - everything was strewn with jewels.
Catacomb saints
Five hundred years ago, a wave of Protestant reformation swept across Europe. The writings of Luther Calvin and other Protestants urged believers not to worship "idols" - icons, holy relics, pieces of the cross and other cult objects.
On this turbid wave, many relics of the saints were destroyed or irretrievably lost. And after the storm subsided slightly, the Catholic Church decided to restore them.
It was at that time that hundreds of human remains were discovered in the deep, centuries-old Roman catacombs, the age and origin of which were unknown to anyone. The monks, following the orders of the Catholic Church, carefully selected the best preserved skeletons, clothed them in garments embroidered with gold, adorned them with numerous jewelry and sent them to European monasteries and churches. From that moment on, the skeletons of these unknown people began to be considered the remains of the first Christian martyrs, the official relics of saints, although no one canonized them. Those in the know called them catacomb saints.
Promotional video:
Indiana Bones
By the 19th century, when the ecclesiastical passions had subsided, all the jewels were removed from some of these "false" relics, and the relics themselves (now just bones) were quietly buried. But some of them survived, having survived the last centuries, filled with wars and revolutions, in the deep basements of some European churches and monasteries. There they were discovered and photographed by the historian, researcher and, as he is also called by analogy with the hero of the famous trilogy "Indiana Jones" "Indiana Bones" (Bones translates from English as "bones") Paul Kudunaris.
Paul doesn't talk about how he managed to get into the "holy of holies" and in addition to make hundreds of high-quality pictures there. He tells reporters that his great-grandfather was also a grave thief, and therefore adventurism plus interest in burials is in his genes. But, be that as it may, these creepy photographs, according to Paul himself, were taken on completely legal grounds. By the way, in one of the churches, more precisely in the storage of bones at the church, the researcher was forbidden to photograph. The rector of the Russian Orthodox Church in Athos (Greece) allowed Paul to inspect the vault, but he asked to remove the camera, and Paul honestly complied with this request.
Photo in the dark
How did it all begin? “I was working on another book, examining various crypts, when I learned about the existence of the Catacomb Saints,” says Kudunaris. “The more I learned about them, the more insistent my desire to tell this exciting story to the general public became. It all started with a crypt stuffed with skeletons in Melnik (Czech Republic) - I stumbled upon it by accident. And it just so happened that literally the day before I was in the famous Sedlec (church made of bones). Both of them are equal in their impact, but I was embarrassed by the fact that Sedlec is widely known, and nobody knew anything about the crypt in Melnik, not even travel agencies."
Then Paul came to the conclusion that repositories similar to this crypt could be in other places in Europe, and began to search.
The shooting process itself caused a lot of difficulties, according to Kudunaris. “In one place in Austria, I had to create a device that allowed me to hang the camera upside down at a decent height in order to get a good picture. I also did not bring lanterns and searchlights to the crypts and never used a flash, as I wanted to convey the very mood of these gloomy places. The exposure had to be held for 4-5 hours, and digital cameras are not capable of this - so I worked mainly with film cameras."
Be that as it may, but hundreds of creepy pictures made up Paul Kudunaris's book-album. We have presented some of them to you.
Konstantin Fedorov