This first section is a brief explanation of my Italy blog posts, which were inspired by my 2-week trip to Italy in May, 2025. Feel free to skip this section if you’ve read it before.
Dear Reader, If you read my Italy posts in the order in which they’ve come out, it may seem as though we hopped back and forth all over the country, but I have decided not to write these posts sequentially. I want to write about the things that interest me most, as the spirit moves me. For some topics, I may even combine cities. I hope that by doing so, you’ll find it a lot more interesting than if I just give you a tedious day by day description of our itinerary, as if I were your Aunt Mabel forcing you to sit down and watch all her Super 8 films of the family road trip to Niagara Falls from 1966.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about how I’m approaching this travelogue-within-a-blog, please let me know in the comments below!
On one particular day in Rome, I had something uniquely European, uniquely Italian, uniquely Catholic in store for Dear Husband. I was looking forward to taking him out of his comfort zone a bit. I don’t mean this as a criticism, but as a white male, his comfort zone has a tendency to surround him wherever he goes, like one of those Zorb Balls that people climb inside to roll down hills. He’s not even aware of it, because he has rarely had to be outside of it.
He is supremely confident. I don’t recall ever having seen him afraid. Startled, sure, but never afraid. But then why would he be, tucked safely inside his Zorb as he always is? When I worry in ways that other women consider natural, he often mistakes it for fear. He doesn’t always comprehend that, like most women, I’ve never had the luxury of a Zorb, so I have to exercise more self-security than he does. That’s not fear. That’s common sense.
My intent wasn’t to scare him, mind you. I’m not Nasty Wife to DH (at least I try not to be). I just wanted him to have his horizons broadened. Give him a new perspective. Put him somewhere he never imagined he’d be. Sometimes a little gentle de-Zorbing does him good. (It has up to this point, anyway.)
So, we hopped in a taxi and, as proof that I’m not Nasty Wife, I let him read up on the venue before we got there. In the taxi. At a point when turning back would have been poor form. (Okay, nobody’s perfect.)
Our destination was a church called Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. And before you even ask, no, it’s not a church known for its Cappuccino. (And besides, that wouldn’t take DH out of his comfort zone. He was already in love with the stuff by then.)
This church, with its alphabet soup of a name, was built in 1631, and after all the truly ancient things we had been seeing, that seems shockingly modern to me. I’m sure it was quite pretty inside, but believe it or not, I couldn’t tell you. We never saw it, so we have no pictures.
We weren’t there for the church. We were there for the Capuchin Crypt that lies beneath it. Thanks to the (highly recommended) Rick Steves Italy Guidebook, we knew that in order to see the crypt, we first had to go through the museum, and Steves suggested that we just bolt through the museum as there was nothing there of note. In the end, I’m glad we did spend a little time there, though.
The museum is basically Capuchin Monk Central. Capuchin is the name of this order of monks, but it’s also the name of the hood these monks wear. Their outfits are said to match the ones that Saint Francis wore. In Italian, the plural for Capuchin is Cappuccini, hence its inclusion in the church name. And the drink Cappuccino (that word being the singular for Capuchin in Italian), is called that because it’s the same color brown as their robes. No, they didn’t invent the drink.
(Incidentally, Capuchin Monkeys, of organ grinder fame, are named after these monks as well. When Portuguese explorers came to the Americas in the 1500’s they thought these monkeys looked like the monks, especially when in their robes with the hoods down. I guess they looked funny to people even back then. The Capuchin Monks can’t seem to catch a break.)
It never occurred to me to give much thought to this particular order of monks (or any other, for that matter), let alone go to a museum to learn more about them. This is the perfect place for it, though, because this church is their headquarters, at least for Rome, and it was built for that purpose. They had been in other locations prior to 1631, but those had been located closer to the Tiber River and were smaller, so they had been abandoned one by one due to flooding and/or overcrowding.
When they moved to this facility, they brought 300 full cartloads of the remains of deceased friars with them, which they had exhumed from the previous locations. I can only imagine what that procession of monks pushing cartloads of bones must have looked like to area residents. (“There goes the neighborhood…”)
Anyway, I must admit that I did skip over a lot at the museum. The parts that tried to cram religion down my throat—hard pass. But the funny thing is, they provided an audio tour at no additional charge, and it was actually entertaining as well as edifying. Each display case had a number on it, so if you weren’t interested in a certain display, you could jump over that chapter of the audio tour. I thought that was very pragmatic of the museum’s curator. I was impressed.
We learned that the Capuchin Order sprang from the Franciscan family in 1528, when it obtained permission from Pope Clement VII to live in stricter accordance with the Rule of Saint Francis. They wanted to follow a more rigorous model of penance, poverty and prayer. Their extreme asceticism and inner prayer, they feel, allows them to better serve and preach to the humblest parts of the population, especially during epidemics. You can still find Capuchin Monks throughout the world. It’s one of the largest, most popular orders in the Catholic Church.
The museum displays humble robes, elaborate vestments, illuminated manuscripts, crosses, and reliquaries, as you can see here.
But it also contains more peculiar things. There was a very odd statue of St. Roch of Montpellier. The story goes that when he got the plague in the 1300’s, every day a dog would bring him a piece of bread. He (St. Roch, not the dog) is now the protector of the plague, the rural world, animals, major disasters such as earthquakes, epidemics, and serious diseases.
A lot of fascinating art was displayed as well. There seemed to be an obsession with Christ bleeding on the cross, and portraits of monks with skulls. The skulls are examples of “memento mori” which is Latin for, basically, “Remember, you’re gonna die.”
Memento mori in Catholic art is meant to remind us that life is short, the battle against sin is great, and one day we’ll be judged. They are supposed to make us contemplate our mortality and prepare for the hour of our death, which could come at any time. (So you better be good, for goodness sake.)
But the museum display that definitely made us blink, and the one that the audio tour kind of brushed nervously past, almost treating it as an afterthought, was the one regarding penance. The Capuchin Monks weren’t kidding when they said they wanted to follow a more rigorous model thereof.
When I think of Saint Francis, I think of a gentle, quiet soul who lived the life of a hermit, in poverty; a man who walked around in sandals, and communed with the animals. Our visit to his Hermitage, as described in my last Italy post, reinforced this. And all of it is true. What was conveniently overlooked was his ascetic lifestyle. I mean, yes, he slept on a really uncomfortable, tiny, misshapen rock. I saw it with my own eyes. Yes, he reluctantly forced himself to serve lepers until he had a change of heart about them and grew to love them. I knew that too.
What gets glossed over is his tendency to intentionally deprive himself of sleep in ways that we would consider torture (you really don’t want to know), his requirement that he beg for every single necessary thing, his extreme fasting, his inclination to wear hair shirts, and (oh, my) a propensity to get naked and roll around in thorn bushes.
So, yeah, that’s the more rigorous model of penance the Capuchin Monks aspire to. The museum’s display on the subject includes whips for self-flagellation, hair shirts, metal straps with hooks that are tightened around the body, all used to experience Christ’s suffering firsthand. There is even a confessions counter on display. (No pressure there!)
I think the takeaway is supposed to be, “Look how dedicated we are.” “Look how seriously we take our beliefs.” But that’s not what I took from it. Now, on the rare occasion that I come across a brown-robed monk, I’m going to wonder how he is torturing himself beneath his robe. I’ll probably want to save him as much as he wants to save me. It makes me sad to think about it.
So, after that rather unique museum sojourn, going to the crypt didn’t seem as extreme an act as it had before. But having said that, I have to admit that what I anticipated from the whole adventure bore no resemblance to what I actually experienced.
There are the bones of 4000 monks down there (Carts. So many carts…), all arranged artistically. Those monks died between 1528 and 1870, when the Roman Catholic Church stopped permitting burial in and under churches. Skulls, pelvises, femurs… all creatively positioned. Chandeliers made of bones. Ornate ceiling decorations that you’d expect to see in a baroque palace if you didn’t look too closely at the materials being used to make them. Some complete skeletons wearing monks robes, looking for all the world as if they wished to impart an urgent message.
I expected the place to feel macabre, even ghoulish. I thought it would be kind of amusing, in a way, to see how DH would react to all this creepy weirdness. But something came over me in that crypt. I started seeing the beauty in it. I began to see the whole point of it.
I’m sure it was meant to be a gigantic memento mori of sorts; a way to show that this life is temporal, and you go on to live a life with God. Having faith in God is the most important thing, and so on and so forth. But I felt a different kind of reverence.
What a rare gift life is. How beautiful we are, even down to our very bones. And when we go, that’s okay. Mortality is okay. We make way for others. Just value your life. Appreciate what you have while you have it. Not the things. The people. The experiences. None of it lasts forever.
Oh, and stop trying to take care of/be loyal to/defend/gain acceptance or approval from/punish/worry about the dead. They are past all that. They are beyond caring. They’re just fine.
As I contemplated mortality, I saw a sign down there, amongst all those skulls that were staring back at me. (Not a spiritual sign. An actual placard.) It summed things up perfectly.
“What you are now, we used to be. What we are now, you will be.”
I left there feeling very thoughtful, and I’m not the only one who has felt that way. After Mark Twain visited, he dedicated 5 pages of his book, The Innocents Abroad, to this Crypt. (Incidentally, if you enjoy travelogues, that’s a fantastic book.) And in 1775 the Marquis de Sade said of the crypt that he had never seen anything more impressive. (But I wonder if he left feeling philosophical or inspired.)
There are signs as you enter the crypt that say no photography allowed, but we asked about taking photos when we bought the tickets, and the staff assured us that they had no problem with it. So what follows are some of the photos we took. I wish they accurately portrayed the awe the place inspired. I wish they didn’t look so disturbing.
All I can say is that the place shouldn’t be viewed as some sort of pre-industrial haunted house put there for our amusement. There’s much more to it than that. It has to be seen to be truly appreciated.
But you’re in luck. In 1851, the Capuchin Order began opening the crypt to the public, but only for the week following All Souls Day. (Women weren’t allowed in until 1853.) But it’s been open to everyone, daily, except for certain holidays, since 2022. I wonder if the pandemic did anything to change their thinking about the need for people to see and receive the message this crypt imparts, or if the timing of the increased access is purely a coincidence. I wish I had thought to ask.
If you’re ever in Rome, ask for me. Stop by and learn life’s most important lesson from 4000 monks who have definitely risen above penance and all other forms of suffering that we humans choose to inflict upon ourselves. It’s a lesson well worth learning.
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