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Santa Maria della Concezione

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W. D. Perez-Leston
W. D. Perez-Leston
First Reviewer
5 out of 5
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10
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Reverently Impressive. Very Special

Reverently Impressive. Very Special

I stayed with my Christian aunt in Italy for a month some years ago. She's one of those devoted people, happy helping others, going to mass every Sunday. Most in the family believe she would have made a very good nun.

She was born somewhere else (with my family, I forget where) but spent in Italy forty or fifty years, so one could say she was mainly an Italian lady, very proud -justified- of the monumental importance of Rome.

She took me around to see every single chapel that had a remarcable mosaic, every piece of column over 500 years old, every statue, every arch, every church with a piece of art worth seing.
And when I thought I had seen it all, she took me to Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini.

As I stepped into the morbidly decorated passage, I felt a chill of terror running through my spine, then something similar to disgust, not so much about the place but about the people who had done it.
The sight of all those neatly arranged aged bones and skulls, creating perfect designs on the walls was worthy of a psychological examination of its creators.

But then, leaving me totally starteled, my devoted aunt told me about how much she liked that church, what an overwealming feeling of reverence it insipred in her.
That the bodily remains of holy men should be used as a warning of how short life is, how we should be aware of death, and to be able to express so much in a very skillfull and artfull way always struck her as the ultimate sense of justice.
These men how had given their souls to God and their remains to their brothers to serve as warning while creating beauty were doubly fulfilling their destiny.

Since then, I have gone back to Rome a couple of times of times on business trips and I have always had time to walk into Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini and, instead of a gruesome sight, what I see is men who have found peace, telling me to take care.

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