page_title: Charnel house
section_title: Monastery of the Transfiguration (Saint Catherine's), Mt. Sinai
hierarchical_section_title: Charnel house / Africa, Europe, and Asia / Monastery of the Transfiguration (Saint Catherine's), Mt. Sinai
caption_attribution_description: Español: Muro de la capilla de los huesos, Évora, Portugal
context_page_description: A charnel house is a vault or building where human skeletal remains are stored. They are often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves. The term can also be used more generally as a description of a place filled with death and destruction.
  The term is borrowed from Middle French charnel, from Late Latin carnāle, from Latin carnālis.
context_section_description: Saint Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai is famous for having a working charnel house. Saint Catherine's was founded by Justinian in the early 6th century, on the site of an older monastery founded about 313 AD and named for Helena of Constantinople. The monastery comprises the whole Autonomous Church of Sinai, under the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The site lies at the foot of Mount Sinai where Christians believe Moses received the Ten Commandments.
  Since the Sinai is an inhospitable place, the brethren of St. Catherine's have struggled to eke out a subsistence-level existence. The difficulty in establishing a large cemetery in the rocky ground notwithstanding, relics are also gathered for temporal and spiritual reasons: a reminder to the monks of their impending death and fate in the hereafter. The Archbishop of Saint Catherine's is commonly the Abbot as well. After death, he is afforded the dignity of a special niche within the "Skull-House".
caption: Charnel house in Évora
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