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The Capuchin Monks

2017-02 / Brno, Czech Republic

Brno, Czechia has a large series of underground systems that one can visit. And most of them were forgotten for hundreds of years and then rediscovered. One such underground area is the basement of the Capuchin Church in which hundreds of years of monks were laid to rest and accidentally mummified.The coffin seen in the back of this photo is the communal coffin. Monks take a vow of poverty to increase their connection to their god and thus become rather thrifty. Each monk was buried in that coffin with all of his burial rites and ceremony and then was taken to the basement and laid on the ground as shown here. Now the dead are a part of the current era. The signs on the back walls say "As you are now, we once were; as we are now, you shall be."