u/BlueVampire0

You may wonder how all these bones were craved in a small chapel in the Czech Republic. It goes back to 1278 when the King of Bohemia sent Henry, the abbot of the Sedlec Cistercian Monastery to the Holy Land.

He brought back a jar of earth from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified at Golgotha.

When he arrived back, he put the earth over the cemetery. The rumor about his act soon spread everywhere, and thus, Sedlec became a desired place to be buried. Some people even brought their dead relatives to be buried in the Holy Soil of Sedlec.

Soon, in Europe, the plague caused the death of many people, and many people went to Sedlec before their end.

In the 15th century, a Gothic church was built near the cemetery, and its basement was used as an ossuary. The bones stayed there for centuries till 1870, when a woodcarver named Frantisek Rint was appointed to place the bones in order. The result was impressively shocking, 40.000 human bodies are now arranged, and the place is now popularly known as the Church of Bones.

By the mid-17th century, the Catholic Church formally banned the depiction of the Trinity as a three-faced (or three-headed) figure, judging it theologically problematic and pastorally misleading.

In 1628, Pope Urban VIII, through the Congregation of the Index, officially condemned such representations. Artists were instructed to use approved Trinity iconography: typically, the Father as an elderly man, the Son as Christ, and the Spirit as a dove—distinct, yet unified by light or gesture.

Another option (less recommended but tolerated) was to represent the Holy Trinity as three angels, since it's a image present in the Old Testament.

The Sea Bishop or Bishop-fish is a legendary creature first recorded in the 16th century. According to legend, it was taken to the King of Poland, who wished to keep it. It was also shown to a group of Catholic Bishops, to whom the Sea Bishop gestured, appealing to be released. They granted its wish, at which point it made the sign of the cross and disappeared into the sea.

Another was supposedly captured in the ocean near Germany in 1531. It refused to eat and died after three days.

Some cryptologists believe that the reports were based on the discovery of a large mutilated Grimaldi scaled squid.

Pope Leo XIV holds an audience on Monday with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dame Sarah Mullally, calling on Catholics and Anglicans to continue working to overcome any differences to proclaim the Gospel.

526 years ago, on April 26, 1500 – Easter Sunday – the first Mass in Brazil was celebrated. The Mass was celebrated by Friar Henrique de Coimbra and other priests on the southern coast of the actual Brazilian State of Bahia.

In his letter to the King of Portugal Manuel I, the scribe Pero Vaz de Caminha described the celebration held at a “very well-arranged altar” and which, he observed, “was heard by all with great pleasure and devotion.”

The Portuguese arrived in Brazil on April 22, 1500, in 13 caravels led by Pedro Álvares Cabral. He initially named that land Terra de Vera Cruz (Land of the True Cross).

After disembarking on land and making initial contact with the indigenous people, they sailed aboard their caravels to a more protected location, stopping at Coroa Vermelha beach. It was there that they celebrated Holy Mass.

After the celebration, as Pero Vaz de Caminha recounts, the priest ascended a high chair and “delivered a solemn and profitable sermon on the Gospel story; and at the end he spoke of our lives and the discovery of this land, referring to the Cross, under whose obedience we came, which was very appropriate and inspired much devotion.”

According to the accounts, the scribe Caminha believed that the conversion of the indigenous people would be easy, as they demonstrated respect for the Christian religion. In this regard, he asked the king to send clergymen immediately to baptize them.

The most famous representation of the celebration is the painting “The First Mass in Brazil,” made in 1861 by the painter Victor Meirelles de Lima.

The Horns of Moses are an iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity whereby Moses was presented as having two horns on his head, later replaced by rays of light. The idea comes from a translation, or mis-translation, of a Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible, and many later vernacular translations dependent on that. Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.