There Are Better Ways to Mourn

On a crisp fall day in Vienna, Austria, I received a private tour of the crypt below Michaelerkirche (St. Michael’s Church). Bernard, the young Austrian man who led me down the steep stone staircase, had perfect English delivered in an inexplicably deep Southern accent. “Aye’ve been told my ax-sent is straynge be-fore,” he drawled, like a Confederate general. Bernard explained that during the Middle Ages, when the members of the Hapsburg court attended St. Michael’s, there was a cemetery located directly outside, in the courtyard. But, as so often happened in larger European cities, the cemetery became overcrowded, “lay-urd with de-cay-ing bodies” — so overcrowded, in fact, that the neighbors (that is to say, the Emperor) complained of the stench. The cemetery was closed and a crypt constructed deep beneath St. Michael’s in the seventeenth century. Many of the thousands of bodies buried in the crypt were laid to rest on beds of woodchips inside wooden coffins. The woodchips soaked up the fluids from decomposition. The dryness that followed this fluid absorption, in combination with drafts of cool air flowing through the crypt, caused a spontaneous natural mummification of the bodies. Bernard shone a flashlight onto a man’s body, holding the beam on the spot where the lace bottom of his baroque-era wig clung to his taut grey skin. Down the row, past the typical stacks of bones and skulls found in charnel houses, the ...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Books Source Type: news