What you’ll learn in this episode: What charnel houses and ossuaries are, and why they were an important part of people’s spiritual lives Why the Catholic Church decorated hundreds of Roman skeletons with jewels in the 17th century Why 17th century nuns were some of the most skilled yet unrecognized jewelers of their day How art and jewelry can help us explore death and other touchy subjects About Paul Koudounaris Paul Koudounaris is an author and photographer based in Los Angeles. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of California, and he has traveled around the world to document charnel houses, ossuaries, pet cemeteries, and other macabre subjects for both academic and popular journals. His books include The Empire of Death, Memento Mori, and Heavenly Bodies, which features the little-known skeletons taken from the Roman Catacombs in the seventeenth century and decorated with jewels by teams of nuns. His most recent book is A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History. Additional Resources: Instagram Photos: Rorschach upper half, chest with skull  Hergiswil stomach full shot Weyarn head with problem here due to discoloration behind skull due to back lighting through stained glass window Sonntagsberg felic chest detail Bad Schussenried head and chest Peterskirche munditia in shrine three problems, top over curtain over rope and weird candle Transcript: Today, covering a skeleton with jewels seems odd or downright morbid. In the 17th century, it was par for the course for the Catholic Church, which covered the skeletons of martyrs with jewels and lavish accessories to highlight the Church’s power. Author and photographer Paul Koudounaris has spent years researching and documenting these little-known historic treasures, which he detailed in his book Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures & Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how the skeletons (and human remains generally) were an important part of people’s spiritual lives; why nuns were responsible for decorating the jeweled skeletons; and why the Catholic Church’s efforts to honor martyrs didn’t exactly go as it intended. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Paul Koudounaris, who’s an art historian, photographer and author whose publications in the field of charnel houses and ossuary research have made him a well-known figure in these areas. Today, he’ll tell us about his fascinating work and what it has to do with jewelry. We’ll hear about his unusual jewelry journey today. Paul, welcome to the podcast. Paul: Hi. I’m delighted to be here, and I’m delighted to talk about this topic from the perspective of jewelry. Sharon: I was so interested to hear it. Tell us about your journey. Did you get into this field because of your doctoral studies in art? How did you get into it? I don’t know what charnel house means, and I didn’t want to look it up until I heard your definition. Paul: Well, a charnel house is just a room full of bones. It’s from an old Latin word, “caro,” that meant flesh. It’s a flesh room, or it was literally a bone room. When they’d run out of room in cemeteries, they would put the bones and skulls in a separate room. They didn’t want to discard the bones of their relatives, but they needed room to bury more people. I started out studying that. Of course, that has nothing to do with jewelry, at least not at first, but it does have something to do with a PhD in history.  When I finished the PhD, everyone likes to carve their own niche in life, and I was always interested in the macabre stuff. I was very familiar with the famous charnel houses, giant bone rooms, such as the Paris catacombs, which most people know about as big tourist attractions. As I traveled around Europe and looked in depth, I started to realize how many of these places there were that nobody knew about; that weren’t famous but were spectacula