7. The whole of Hyacinth of Caesarea is on display in Germany, covered in jewels
A fingernail or a piece of a saint’s bone is all well and good, but surely you can’t beat the entire thing. Hyacinth of Caesarea was another obscure martyr from an unknown date of early Christianity, killed by the Romans for his (yes, Hyacinth was a boy’s name back then) faith. Though we know precious little about him today, Hyacinth’s name appears in a list of martyrs from the 4th century, which suggests that he was once both important and popular. He was most revered as a saint in Italy, where the later, unsubstantiated legends about him developed.
Hyacinth’s skeleton arrived at the Church of the Assumption in Fürstenfeldbruck, near Munich at an unknown date. The church was originally part of a Cistercian Abbey, but this was sacked by the Swedish army in the mid 17th century. The abbey church was rebuilt in its present, over-the-top Baroque style in the late 18th century, and this backdrop provides an appropriate setting for Hyacinth’s remains. For rather than leave the skeleton as a simple but effective memento mori, it was covered with thousands of jewels and posed in a glass coffin, rather like a cursed king from Indiana Jones.
