Jewelled Skeletons

Long before Damien Hirst, skeletal bling was all the rage across 16th-century Catholic Europe. Paul Koudounaris discovers an amazing golden age of mediumistic clerics and dodgy relics.

A pair of American tourists pause in surprise in the centre of the nave of the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in the small, rural Bavarian town of Rott-am-Inn. Their attention is fixed on a pair of beautifully jewelled, articulated skeletons in niches on the walls of the church, where one might normally expect to find side altars.

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