The jeweled body of “St. Felix,” Gars am Inn, Germany. One of the catacomb saints of the 16th-17th century [407×611]
by Remote_Finish_9429
The jeweled body of “St. Felix,” Gars am Inn, Germany. One of the catacomb saints of the 16th-17th century [407×611]
by Remote_Finish_9429
4 Comments
In the 16th century, a network of catacombs containing the remains of possible martyrs was discovered in Rome. The remains were sent to churches in Germany where relics had been destroyed during the Reformation. Artisans reassembled and decorated the bodies for veneration. Since the identities were unknown, “Felix” is not a canonized saint but rather a generic name—basically St. Happy in Latin. The gold and jewels were meant to suggest the glories that await the faithful.
Patron saint of spiders and lost animals.
I thought that was Michael Jackson for a second.
This actually looks a lot like the cover art from his Dangerous album.
The catacomb saints are my favorite. (There’s a fantastic photography book on Amazon if anybody’s interested called “Heavenly Bodies.”) I spent weeks and weeks making a Halloween costume of one of these and I slowly paraded up and down the busy downtown street with my hands in a religious pose during the festivities. I had thousands and thousands of photographs snapped of me that night! It was surreal. I paid somebody a premium to airbrush my face into a really realistic skull as well, so the whole thing really worked.
I always try and do Halloween costumes like this that have a bit of history behind them and every year a different group reacts to my costumes. (I went as one of the famous Chinese terra-cotta warrior once as well lol. I had so many Chinese tourists snap my picture that year! They seemed really proud of the costume and their cultural attachment.)
The year I did this?
The Hispanic/Catholics absolutely ate it up! The number of times I heard the word “beautiful” in Spanish was amazing! As somebody who grew up Protestant, I forget how familiar with this kind of iconic imagery Catholics are and how they relate to it. .
Anyway, yeah: google the catacomb Saints. They look like something out of the Dark Souls video game series and they are just some of the most special artifacts on earth to me.