Kutna Hora is a town in the Czech Republic about 70 km (44 miles) east
of the capital Prague. The town florished during the 1300 due to the
immense silver findings in the vicinity. The town provided most of
the silver for the coins circulating in Europe at the time. As the town
grew new churches were built and old ones repaired and expanded.
One of the most famous medieval cathedrals the Church of Santa Barbara (Kostel sv. Barbora) was built at that time with money raised from the miners from the area in honour of their industry's patron saint and without envolvment of any governamental fundings. Another less known church (but of major interest to me!) was sittuated in Sedlec - a kind of a suburb to Kutna Hora some 2 kilometers away from the Kutna Hora town center itself and got heavily expanded with a new Chappel added to the old buildings. The Sedlec Cisternians weren't just joining the Kutna Hora construction boom when they started expanding. They did it because of practical reasons. That chappel with it's belonging graveyard had become a well known and attractive place to get ones relatives buryied in a long time ago. Why you may ask?.. 
The answer is to be found in the actions of a certain abbot Henry. In the
year of the lord 1278 the Cisternian abbot Henry embarqued on a pilgrime
voyage to the Holy Land (Palestina). This was more or less common practice
for people of the church at the time. What he couldn't have imagined is the
effect a little symbolic deed that he performed would have on the future of
the little Sedlec church.While in Palestina abbot Henry visited the Golgotha and from there he brought back to Sedlec a jar full of earth. He refered to this as 'Holy Soil'. When he got back he spread the earth over the Sedlec cemetary and thus the cemetary begun to be considered as a piece of sacred land. The burial ground rapidly became one of the most popular in central Europe and people from all over the country and Europe came to Sedlec to get buried when they felt the strength of life deminuishing. Many brought their dead relatives or friends to be burried in the holy soil of the Sedlec cemetary believing that the holyness of the ground was a sure way to guarantee the burried a place in heaven. Many corpses and bones were accumulated this way and especialy during the times of the plague (the balack death) many who were about to die from the disease came themselves to be buried in Sedlec. By 1318 over 30 000 bodies were burried there and this gave rise to the creation of the ossuary. 
The ossuary is located in the All Saints' Chapel built around 1400. The chapel is still surrounded by a functioning graveyard and if you take a carefull look at the top of it's towers (to the right) you will see that the usual christian cross is replaced by a "jolly roger" or a skull and crossbones. 
The ossuary itself dates from 1511 when a half-blind monk
was given the task to gather the bones from the abolished graves and
putting them in the crypt to make place for new "customers". The task
may seem somewhat macabre and unenviable but it served a practical
purpose. Anyhow - now the material was in store and waiting for an
idea and someone to realize that idea.
A more questionable task than the one of the half-blind monk was the one of the local woodcarver who as late as 1870 was hired to decorate the inside of the Chappel with the human material (an approximate of 40 000 sets of human bones) at his disposal. The name of the artist was Frantisek Rindt and the employer was the Duke (Prince?) of Shwartzenberg. The coats of arms of the family Shwartzenberg was one of the creations evolved from the artists mind. However questionable the Ossuary - it is real. The bones are real. The feeling of death is real. But also the feeling of peace. Most of the dead in the Ossuary died a "natural" i.e. non-violent death and the bones were removed from the ground to give more christians the possibility to be buried on holy ground. I'd like to stress the fact that the church is not made of bones as so many seem to think! The interior is decorated with human bones but it's a "normal" church made of stone and bricks. I'd also like to point out that it's a normal christian church with a Christ on the cross figure and all the rest. It's not some weird cult or satanist church or anything like that. Need I say that a visit is strongly recomended?...
There is a short black and white film inspired by the Ossuary. |
