Actual skulls and bones were long used to mark the entrances to

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

cemeteries (''campo santo''). The practice, dating back many centuries, led to the symbol eventually becoming associated with the concept of

death Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...

. Some

crucifix A crucifix (from Latin ''cruci fixus'' meaning "(one) fixed to a cross") is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the ''corpus'' (Lati ...

es feature a skull and crossbones beneath the corpus (the depiction of

Jesus' Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

body), in reference to a legend that the place of the crucifixion was also the burial place of

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

or, more likely, in reference to the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

statement (King James Version: Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, and John 19:17) that the place of his crucifixion was called " Golgotha" (tr. "the Place of a Skull"). Today, an example of a real skull and crossbones may be seen in the 1732 Nuestra Señora del Pilar church overlooking the famous

Recoleta Cemetery La Recoleta Cemetery ( es, Cementerio de la Recoleta) is a cemetery located in the Recoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It contains the graves of notable people, including Eva Perón, presidents of Argentina, Nobel Prize winners, ...

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. It contains several altars rescued from other early Spanish churches in South America. One of these has twenty rectangular window boxes arrayed behind and above the altar, five wide by four tall. The size of these glass window boxes is such that the femurs of the priests thus interred are a bit too long to lie flat and so must be leaned up in an "X" formation. The other bones fill in the spaces around the femurs with the skull sitting prominently on top of the bone pile centered above the "X".

Other countries

The

Jolly Roger Jolly Roger is the traditional English name for the flags flown to identify a pirate ship preceding or during an attack, during the early 18th century (the later part of the Golden Age of Piracy). The flag most commonly identified as the Jolly ...

, and the similar

Totenkopf ''Totenkopf'' (, i.e. ''skull'', literally "dead person's head") is the German word for the skull and crossbones symbol. The "skull and crossbones" symbol is an old international symbol for death, the defiance of death, danger, or the dead, as ...

was a popular symbol of mortality across at this time across Europe and has its origins in the medieval

Danse Macabre The ''Danse Macabre'' (; ) (from the French language), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death. The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification of ...

. Tombstones from the 18th century in Southern Scotland fairly frequently feature skull and crossbones. The Church of St Nicholas in

Deptford Deptford is an area on the south bank of the River Thames in southeast London, within the London Borough of Lewisham. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne. From the mid 16th century to the late 19th it was home to Deptford Dock ...

features two Deaths Heads on its gateposts dating to the early 18th century.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Skull And Crossbones (Spanish Cemetery) Cultural aspects of death Spanish culture Christian art about death