Ossuaries and Charnel Houses: Death, Resurrection and the Living

Abstract

During my studies on the connections between Black Death and culture during the Renaissance, I have come across more than once with a  less known aspect of Renaissance Europe which has particularly attracted my attention. I am speaking about the concept/place of “ossuary”, a room or set of rooms containing hundreds of human bones (often arranged in the most peculiar forms) gradually becoming places of cult charged with symbolic meaning. In this brief article, I would like to illustrate the ways in which ossuaries reflect conceptions of death and resurrection through two relevant examples.